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THE GRAFTON HISTORICAL SERIES 
Edited by HENRY R. STILES, A.M., M.D 



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The IIistohu^ Hudson River 
Looking northward from West Point 



OLD STEAMBOAT DAYS 
ON THE HUDSON RIVER 

TALES AND REMINISCENCES OF THE STIRRING 

TIMES THAT FOLLOWED THE INTRODUCTION 

OF STEAM NAVIGATION 

BY 

DAVID LEAR BUCKMAN 




THE GRAFTON PRESS 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



fLSHARYofCONGRESsf 
two Cooles Received 

NOV 6 «^0^ 
'copy ^. , 



Copyright, 1907 
By the GRAFTON PRESS 



FOREWORD 

THE approaching dual celebration of the Ter- 
centennial of Henry Hudson's discovery of the 
great river bearing his name, and the Centennial of 
Robert Fulton's successful application of steam to 
navigation on that same stream, would seem to warrant 
the appearance of this little volume. Aside from this 
fact, the subject is one that calls up many interesting 
reminiscences on topics that have not heretofore been 
grouped along the lines the author has endeavored to 
follow. 

Most of the old river men best calculated to furnish 
both information and advice in the preparation of a 
book such as this, have gone on their last long trip, 
while those who remain are comparatively few and 
widely scattered. There are possibly still many old 
steamboat men who have, stored away in ancient scrap- 
books and records, highly interesting data that should 
be brought together in some permanent form — and 
which the writer would be pleased to incorporate in 
some future edition — ^for the benefit of those who may 
seek to learn something more of the unfolding of one 
of the most glorious and important periods in the 
country's development. To those who have helped the 



vi Foreword 

author in any way — and there have been many — grateful 
acknowledgment is hereby given. Many books have 
aided in furnishing the data that will be found in the 
following pages, among the number being "Reigart's 
Biography," J. H. Morrison's ''History of American 
Steam Navigation" and '' Munsell's Annals." Special 
thanks are due Mr. Samuel Ward Stanton, editor of 
the " Nautical Gazette," for his permission to use the in- 
teresting table of old boats, prepared by him, and sev- 
eral illustrations that have appeared in that publication. 

The fact that the author's father followed the river 
for many years, handling the wheel of the old North 
America on her sprints to cut down the time, and his 
great-uncle commanded the good sloop Robert Burns 
long before that, carrying both freight and passengers, 
has added no small degree of interest to the labor 
involved in the preparation of ''Old Steamboat Days 
on the Hudson." 

To the memory of his father in particular, the author 
would inscribe whatever of interest and value may be 
found in this tribute to the men of the early days, who 
made possible the important chapter of the country's 
history that deals with steam navigation on the Hud- 
son River. 

D. L. B. 

September 30, 1907. 



CONTENTS 

I Robert Fulton ..... 1 
II The First Steamboat . . . . 10 

III Some Old-timers 18 

IV Rival Lines on the River . . .30 
V How THE Great River Monopoly was 

Broken 37 

VI Steamboat Evolution . . . .53 

VII Old River Captains . . . . 59 

VIII Fast Time on the River . . .65 

IX Disasters of River Travel . . .75 

X Floating Towns 84 

XI Barge Travel on the River . . 93 

XII The Steamboats of To-day . . . 100 

XIII Hudson-Fulton Memorials . • . 108 

XIV Henry Hudson's River . . . .114 

Appendix . 125 

Index 137 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Historic Hudson River Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

John Fitch's Experiment 2 -^ 

Robert Fulton; from West's Portrait 8 ''' 

The Clermcmt 12 

The Fanny . . 20 

The Norwich 24 

The Armenia o . . 28^ 

The New World 34 

The Air Line 42 

The Riverside 48 -^ 

The De Witt Clinton; the Chumplain 56 

The North America 60 

The Rip Van Winkle 62 

The Mary Powell 66 '^ 

The Wreck of the Swallow 78 ^ 

A Packet Boat on the Erie Canal 86 

A Hudson River Tow . 90 ^^ 

The Hendrick Hudson 102" 

The Princeton 106 -^ 

Robert Fulton; from a Statue 112 / 

Hendrick Hudson on the Half Moon; from a panel in the Astor 

Memorial Doors of Trinity Church 118 ^ 

Table of Prominent Hudson River Steamboats, 1807-1907 . 136 ''^ 



OLD STEAMBOAT DAYS 
ON THE HUDSON RIVER 



OLD STEAMBOAT DAYS 

CHAPTER I 

ROBERT FULTON 

ROBERT FULTON will always be known as the 
inventor of the steamboat. It was a great day in 
the world's work, when, after years of study, experiment 
and disappointment, he traveled from New York to 
Albany on his little steamboat the Clermont. That was 
in August, 1807, just one hundred years ago. 

A new distinction was added to the noble Hudson, 
that of being the first river on which a successful 
demonstration of steam navigation had been made. 
There had been previous efforts made both in this 
country and abroad to apply the steam engine, yet in 
the infancy of its development, to the navigation of 
boats, but without practical results. 

Fulton himself had made a trial on the Seine, France, 
in 1803, and failed. The boat was too frail to stand the 
weight of the engine and boilers and they had broken 
through the bottom of the craft during an overnight 
storm and sunk in the river. Others had tried before 
him. James Rumsey in 1784 on the Potomac sought 



2 Old Steamboat Days 

to propel a boat by forcing a jet of water from the stem 
with pumps worked by steam. Some of his experi- 
ments with the boat were witnessed by General Wash- 
ington and other oflSicers of the Army, but they were 
failures. John Fitch had tried his boats on the Dela- 
ware at Philadelphia (1790), and on the Collect Pond, 
N. Y. (1796), and failed. Elijah Ormsbee, with his 
"' goosefoot " paddles, had attempted the same thing at 
Pawtucket, R. I. (1792), and John Stevens crossed 
the river from Hoboken to New York (1804) in a 
boat fitted with a steam engine of his own construc- 
tion, but all of these efforts were barren of practical 
results. 

It remained for Fulton to inaugurate on the Hudson 
the system of navigation that was to revolutionize the 
carrying trade of the world. 

Robert Fulton was born on a farm in Little Britain, 
Pa., November 14th, 1765. His father was an Irish- 
man, of Scotch ancestry, however, named Robert Ful- 
ton, who settled in Philadelphia and there married 
Mary Smith, a native of that city. Most of his early 
education was received in a school at Lancaster, Pa., 
where the family had removed, presided over by a dig- 
nified Quaker. Fulton was not an apt pupil. When 
not busy with his books, for he was not a lazy scholar, 
he haunted the shops of the town, as he early manifested 
an interest in all mechanical matters. A gunsmith's 
shop in the village seemed to possess an especial at- 




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Robert Fulton 3 

traction for him and some of his suggestions were even 
adopted by the workmen. While a boy Fulton made 
sky rockets for his own amusement, and experiments 
with mercury and bullets gave him the name of " Quick- 
silver Bob " among his companions. 

He early developed an aptitude for making sketches, 
and at the age of seventeen, having determined to be- 
come an artist, left for Philadelphia to study. His 
father had been dead several years, but he had been 
an intimate friend of the father of Benjamin West, 
who had then become a celebrated painter. It is more 
than likely that this fact fired young Fulton's ambition 
to become an artist. Afterward Fulton met West, the 
artist, in England and they became fast friends. 

In Philadelphia young Fulton painted portraits and 
landscapes, made drawings of houses and machinery 
and busied himself so industriously during the four 
years of his stay in the city, he not only supported him- 
self, but was able to contribute something to his widowed 
mother at home. He must have made considerable 
money, for in 1785 he bought a farm at Hopewell, 
Washington County, Pa., paying eighty pounds sterling 
for it, and in this homestead he installed his mother 
and the family. 

Fulton, while in Philadelphia, met Benjamin Frank- 
lin and many who had become prominent during the 
Revolution, then just brought to a close. It is quite 
Ukely that some of these may have suggested the idea. 



4 Old Steamboat Days 

which he put into effect as soon as he was twenty-one, 
of making a trip to Europe. This was a great under- 
taking in those days and especially for one so young. 
He carried several letters to Americans abroad from 
his friends in Philadelphia, and he had already made 
the acquaintance of Benjamin West by correspondence. 
West was so pleased with his young countryman, he 
took him into his own family, where he remained several 
years. This introduction to the English people by 
West, then at the height of his fame as an artist, did 
much for Fulton. He industriously painted portraits 
and landscapes, which gave him a means for support, 
but he was constantly making mechanical experi- 
ments. 

He published a pamphlet on canals, patented a 
dredging machine and several other inventions, some 
of which were of great utility. 

Fulton went to Paris in 1797, having acquired 
more fame as an inventor than a painter. There he 
secured accommodations in a hotel occupied by Joel 
Barlow, an American citizen, also somewhat of a 
projector and a man of considerable literary ability. 
Barlow produced among other works '' The Columbiad," 
a national epic, which he dedicated "to his friend 
Robert Fulton." In Paris, Fulton studied French, 
German, mathematics and chemistry. The practical 
result of the application of the two latter studies was 
that his active mind turned to the production of tor- 



Robert Fulton 5 

pedoes, and of submarine boats from which to fire 
them, at the hulls of an enemy's warships. 

He achieved some success with both. He gave an 
exhibition of his plunging boat in the harbor of Brest 
before commissioners of the French Admiralty, in 1801, 
using air stored in a copper globe, condensed to 200 
atmospheres, from which he took supplies of fresh air 
as required. He stayed under water over four hours 
and was highly pleased with the result of his effort, 
but he failed to secure any aid from the French Govern- 
ment to develop the invention. 

The English Government, always alert to what the 
French were doing in those days, invited Fulton to come 
to England with his torpedoes and diving boats. It 
was, of course, as it had to be, a very circuitous, round- 
about sort of invitation, and there were many vexatious 
delays. When Fulton finally reached London in May, 
1805, he found the men who had invited him there, 
retired from office. Finally, through Pitt's influence, 
which had been secured, he blew up an old brig, 
Dorothea^ provided by the Government. The boat had 
been anchored in Walmer Roads near Deal. Walmer 
Castle, hard by, was the residence of Pitt, the Prime 
Minister, and he and a large number of officers in the 
navy witnessed the torpedo experiment, which was in 
a way a success, for the old brig was blown to splinters 
and sank. 

A Royal Commission, after considering the matter for 



6 Old Steamboat Days 

a long while, offered Fulton a reward for his trouble 
and expense if his torpedo system was suppressed, as 
it was deemed inhuman warfare. He declined promptly 
and said twenty thousand pounds sterling a year 
would not tempt him to do so, if the safety and inde- 
pendence of his country should have need of his torpe- 
does. 

Failing to convince the English he resorted to America 
and induced the United States Government to place an 
old vessel at his disposal for an experiment. The 
torpedo machinery did not work right this time and 
the trial was a failure. Fulton knew why, but ex- 
planations did not avail and the Government did not 
adopt the device. 

Modern torpedo warfare has developed along the 
lines Fulton projected and none of the great maritime 
nations are now without their torpedo stations and 
torpedo boats in their navies. 

Fulton left a record of his efforts in this field of inves- 
tigation, entitled "Torpedo War and Submarine Ex- 
plosions, by Robert Fulton, Fellow of the American 
Philosophical Society and of the United States Military 
and Philosophical Society. " The imprint is 1810 and 
it was issued from the shop of William Elliott at 114 
Water street. New York City. It was addressed to Presi- 
dent Madison and the Members of both Houses of 
Congress. The title page bore the inscription ''The 
Liberty of the Seas will be the Happiness of the Earth." 



Robert Fulton 7 

This, it should be borne in mind, was one hundred 
years before steam, electricity, compressed air or any 
of the modern methods of propulsion had been devel- 
oped to the perfection that makes it feasible to apply 
them to the present-day submarines. Fulton was called 
a visionary, when in fact he only prophesied in part, 
that of which the present generation has an everyday 
realization. 

Fulton's busy mind had not alone been occupied 
with torpedoes. He had conceived the idea of propell- 
ing boats by steam as early as 1793. So had others and 
many were experimenting. Chancellor Robert R. 
Livingston, of New York, who thought he had solved 
the problem in 1798, secured the passage of an act by 
the New York Legislature, giving him the exclusive 
right to navigate all kinds of boats which might be 
propelled by the force of fire or steam on all the waters 
of the State, for twenty years, provided that within a 
year he would produce a boat whose progress should 
not be less than four miles an hour. 

Livingston built his boat, but it failed, and he went 
to France as the United States Minister. In Paris he 
met his fellow countryman, Fulton, and the two were 
soon deeply interested in the steamboat proposition. 
A boat was built and equipped with an engine, on the 
Seine, in 1803, and came to grief as already stated. 
The engine and boiler were fished out of the river and 
put in a boat sixty-six feet long and eight feet beam. 



8 Oljd Steamboat Days 

She had paddle wheels at the sides and though she 
moved through the water and was considered wonderful 
by those who saw her, she was a disappointment to 
both Fulton and Livingston. They determined to make 
another effort with a larger boat to be built in America 
and to be sailed on the Hudson. Livingston was to 
supply the money and Fulton to do the work, and it 
was thus the first successful steamboat came to be 
built, Fulton returning to New York in 1806 for this 
purpose. 

Livingston, who thus became Fulton's partner in the 
development of steam navigation, was one of New 
York's most famous men in the early Colonial period. 
He was a member of the Continental Congress, one 
of the committee that drafted the Declaration of In- 
dependence, one of the framers of the Constitution of 
the State of New York, its first Chancellor, adminis- 
tered the first Presidential oath at Washington's in- 
auguration in New York City and while Minister to 
France and experimenting with Fulton on steamboats, 
negotiated the purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon. 

He and Fulton became fast friends. Fulton married 
Harriett, daughter of Walter Livingston, a relative of 
the Chancellor's, and when he came to die as he did 
February 24, 1815, he was buried in the Livingston 
vault in Trinity Churchyard, New York City. He left 
his wife, one son and three daughters. For years no 
monument marked the grave of this distinguished 




Robert Fulton 

From a photograph of the original painting made in England about 
1795 by Benjamin West, and now owned by Fulton's grandson, 
Robert Fulton Ludlow of Claverack, N. Y. 



Robert Fulton 9 

man. It was not until thirty-one years after Fulton's 
death that Congress voted something like $76,300, with- 
out interest, to reimburse him for the contracts he held 
at the time of his death with the Government for build- 
ing the Vesuvius and other vessels of war. 

He was about six feet tall, well proportioned, had a 
face marked with strong features and dark curly hair. 
He was at all times a gentleman and a most engaging 
and instructive conversationalist. When at work on 
one of his projects or inventions he labored with in- 
domitable industry and knew no discouragement, even 
when failure confronted him. His faith in himself and 
his inventions made him surmount every difficulty. 
To him, failures were ever "the stepping-stones to 
success." 



CHAPTER II 



THE FIRST STEAMBOAT 



BEFORE returning to America, Fulton, after mak- 
ing the compact with Livingston to build a boat 
on the Hudson, hastened to England to place the order 
for the engine. 

It was built largely after Fulton's plans and drawings 
at Boulton & Watt's shops, in Birmingham, and sent 
to this country. It had a twenty-four inch cylinder 
and four foot stroke, while the boiler was twenty feet 
long, seven feet deep and eight feet wide. 

The boat was built on the East River at the yards 
of Charles Brownne. It was one hundred and thirty 
feet long, sixteen feet beam, seven foot hold, and drew 
twenty-eight inches of water. Others give her length 
as one hundred and thirty-three and one hundred and 
forty feet and draft as four feet. The paddle wheels 
were at the side and uncovered. They were fifteen feet 
in diameter, four feet wide with a dip of two feet. She 
was named the Clermont after Chancellor Livingston's 



The First Steamboat 11 

country seat on the east shore of the Hudson River in 
Columbia County. 

After many disappointments and delays Fulton left 
New York for Albany, August 17, 1807, in his little 
boat, making the trip in thirty-two hours, and success- 
fully demonstrated to the world the possibilities of 
steam navigation. Others place the date of this first 
steamboat trip as one week earlier. 

Fulton's own account of that first memorable trip is : 

'*I left New York on Monday at four o'clock and 
arrived at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor Livingston, 
at one o'clock on Tuesday, time, twenty-four hours, 
distance, one hundred and ten miles. On Wednesday I 
departed from the Chancellor's at nine o'clock in the 
morning and arrived at Albany at five in the afternoon; 
distance, forty miles, time, eight hours. The sum is 
one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours, equal 
to near five miles an hour. On Thursday at nine 
o'clock in the morning I left Albany and arrived at the 
Chancellor's at six in the evening. I started from 
thence at seven and arrived at New York at four in 
the afternoon; time, thirty hours, space run, one hun- 
dred and fifty miles. Throughout my whole way, both 
going and returning, the wind was ahead; no advantage 
could be derived from my sails; the whole has, there- 
fore, been performed by the power of the steam en- 
gine." 

With what solicitous care every stroke of the piston, 



12 Old Steamboat Days 

every turn of the paddle wheels and every pound of 
steam in the boiler must have been watched by the 
indomitable Fulton. With what pride he must have 
written his old friend Joel Barlow : 

"The power of propelling boats by steam is now 
fully proved. The morning I left New York there 
were not perhaps thirty persons in the city who be- 
lieved the boat would ever move one mile an hour, 
or be of the least utility and while we were putting off 
from the wharf I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. 
This is the way in which ignorant men compliment 
what they call philosophers and projectors." 

It will be noticed that in Fulton's account of his trip 
he impresses the fact that under adverse circumstances 
he made nearly five miles an hour. This fact meant 
much both to him and Chancellor Livingston. They 
had procured another enactment by the Legislature 
giving them the exclusive right and privilege of navi- 
gating all kinds of boats by steam, on all the waters 
of the State for the term of twenty years, upon condi- 
tion that they would produce a boat of not less than 
twenty tons burden, which would move with and 
against the current of the Hudson River at the rate of 
jour miles an hour. 

The condition had been fulfilled, steamboating on 
the Hudson had begun, but many a hard-fought battle 
was ahead of Fulton and Livingston to protect the 
"exclusive" privilege the Legislature had given them. 




O 



The First Steamboat 13 

One of the incidents of this first eventful trip of the 
Clermonty which should not be overlooked, is said to 
have been the announcement of the betrothal of Fulton 
to Harriet Livingston, a relative of the Chancellor's, 
and whose subsequent marriage has already been 
noticed in the preceding chapter. 

The success of the Clermont as a passenger boat was 
assured from the first. People would not content 
themselves with the slow travel of the sloops or stage- 
coaches when they could go to Albany in thirty-two 
hours on the steamboat! The dangerous competition, 
however, was feared by the rivermen. The new steam- 
boat was obstructed by the sloops and fouled inten- 
tionally. The very next winter the Legislature was 
compelled to enact a law imposing a fine and imprison- 
ment on anyone willfully attempting to injure the 
Clermojit or any other steamboat. The same act also 
provided a five year extension of the exclusive privilege 
to Livingston and Fulton, for every additional boat they 
should build and put on the river. 

The Clermont was much like a schooner, built with 
two masts and an exceedingly large funnel, for she 
burned pine wood under her boilers. She poured out 
volumes of black smoke, which at night assumed a 
more startling effect, on account of the sparks that flew 
out with the smoke. 

A writer of the day assures us : 

'^The crews of many sailing vessels shrunk beneath 



14 Old Steamboat Days 

their decks at the terrific sight, while others prostrated 
themselves and besought Providence to protect them 
from the approach of the horrible monster which was 
marching on the tide and lighting its path by the fire 
that it vomited." 

One of the farmers who witnessed this strange ap- 
parition on the river hurried home and assured his 
wife and friends he "had seen the devil going up the 
river in a sawmill." 

As soon as the Clermont's first season was closed, she 
was hauled out of the river at Red Hook for several 
improvements, which the practical operation of the 
boat had suggested to Fulton's mind. She was in- 
creased in length from one hundred and thirty to one 
hundred and fifty feet and in beam from sixteen to 
eighteen feet. Her cabin work was enlarged and her 
machinery overhauled. The cast iron wheel shaft was 
replaced by one of wrought iron and outside supports 
were built for the paddle wheel shaft, relieving the 
strain that had been manifest from the first. The 
paddle wheels were also boxed in at the same time. 
She was renamed the North River and went into regular 
service on the Hudson at the opening of navigation. 
Her boiler, however, gave out and after a delay of two 
months she was fitted with a new one and the boat ran 
regularly for the balance of the season, with Samuel 
Jenkins as captain and David Mandeville as pilot. 

One of the last survivors of the first trip of the North 



The First Steamboat * 15 

River to Albany, in a letter written in 1857, describing 
the trip, says : 

"At the hour appointed for her departure, 9 a. m.. 
Chancellor Livingston with a number of invited friends 
came on board, and, after a good deal of bustle and no 
little noise and confusion the boat was got out into the 
stream and headed up the river. Steam was put on 
and sails were set, for she was provided with large 
square sails, attached to masts, that were so con- 
structed that they could be raised and lowered as the 
direction and strength of the wind might require. 
There was at this time a light breeze from the south 
and with steam and sails a very satisfactory rate of 
speed was obtained, and as the favorable wind con- 
tinued we kept on the even tenor of our way and just 
before sunrise, next morning, we were at Clermont, 
the residence of the Chancellor, who with his friends 
landed and the boat proceeded to Albany, where she 
arrived at two or three o'clock, p. m." 

It cost something to travel by steamboat those days, 
but the boat did not lack patronage. There was no 
fare less than $1.00 for any fraction of twenty miles. 
From New York to Verplanck's Point it was $2.00, 
West Point, $2.50, Newburg, $3.00, Wappinger's 
Creek, $3.25, Poughkeepsie, $3.50, Hudson, $5.00, and 
Albany, $7.00. 

Fulton, as soon as he produced a practical steam- 
boat, turned his attention to steam ferryboats for the 



16 Old Steamboat Days 

North and East Rivers. The Jersey was put on the 
river in 1812 and the York in 1813. These took the 
place of the old ferryboats which were propelled by 
driving two or four horses round and round in the 
hold of the boat. The horses were attached to a pole 
connected with a gear movement that rotated the 
paddle wheels. These horse boats were most primitive 
affairs and very, very slow. 

The steam ferryboats produced by Fulton were a 
great improvement on the old horse boats, in both 
speed and comfort. They were twin boats having two 
complete hulls and united by a bridge, shaped at 
both ends so that they could move in either direction 
with equal rapidity. One of the boats made the trip 
across the river loaded with eight four-wheel carriages, 
twenty-nine horses and one hundred passengers, and 
it was considered a great feat. 

Not only did Fulton devise the ferryboat, but he 
produced the pontoon or floating bridge-dock that 
rises and falls with the tides and makes it possible for 
the trucks and carriages to drive on and off the boats 
substantially as they do to-day. 

Though Fulton's grave in Trinity Churchyard for 
years was not marked by any monument, his name 
was honored in Fulton Ferry and to-day you may take 
the ferryboat Fulton if you will, from the foot of one 
of New York's most busy streets of the same name, 
and land at the foot of the principal street in Brooklyn, 



The First Steamboat 17 

also bearing the same illustrious name. Further, as 
you leave the ferryhouse on the Brooklyn side you 
will walk beneath the statue of Fulton, holding in his 
hand a model of his ferryboat. You have never noticed 
it possibly. Next time you are going that way, look; 
it will pay you. 



CHAPTER III 

SOME OF THE OLD-TIMERS 

THE improvement of steamboats began immediately 
after the Clermonfs successful trip. Practical con- 
ditions had demonstrated the lines along which changes 
were necessary. 

Many others, including Col. John Stevens, of Ho- 
boken, who closely presses Fulton for the honor of 
practically developing steam navigation, were at work 
on the same problem. Stevens developed and patented 
a return tubular boiler that added materially to the 
efficiency of the steam engine. The boilers in Fulton's 
first boats were of copper, most primitive affairs, and 
little more than closed vessels in which to confine the 
steam so as to make it available for use under pressure. 

Fulton's next boat for river travel after the Clermont, 
had the ambitious name of the Car of Neptune. She 
was put on the river in 1809. She was one hundred and 
seventy-five feet long and was two hundred and ninety- 
five tons burden. In 1811 the Paragon, one hundred 
and seventy-three feet long, was built and ran on the 



Some of the Old-timers 19 

river, alternating with the Car of Neptune. Each of 
these boats was an improvement on its immediate 
predecessor, but they were small, most of the space 
being devoted to machinery. The accommodations 
for passengers were limited, and freight was seldom, 
if ever, carried. The time of the passage was cut down 
nearly one-half that of the Clermont, 

Fulton died in 1815 and did not witness the com- 
pletion of the Chancellor Livingston, for which he had 
outlined plans. This vessel was a marked advance 
on his other boats. She was one hundred and fifty- 
four feet long and thirty-two feet beam, and drew seven 
feet three inches of water when loaded and measured 
four hundred and ninety-six tons burden. Her engine 
was seventy-five horse power with a forty-five inch 
cylinder and seven foot stroke. The boiler was twenty- 
eight feet long and twelve feet in diameter. She had 
two funnels and the paddle wheels were seventeen feet 
in diameter. There was a main cabin fifty-four feet 
long, with thirty-eight sleeping berths; above that a 
ladies' cabin with twenty-four berths and a forward 
cabin, with fifty-six berths. These, with the berths for 
the crew, provided sleeping accommodations for one 
hundred and thirty-five persons and she was considered 
a great boat in her day. She could make twelve miles 
an hour with the tide and six against it. Subsequently 
she was lengthened and provided with a more powerful 
engine. For sixteen years she successfully navigated 



20 Old Steamboat Days 

the Hudson, taking part in the grand naval display 
that marked the completion of the Erie Canal, and 
figured in most of the important events on the river in 
that period. " Commodore " Vanderbilt bought her in 
1832 and ran her as an opposition boat on the line 
between Portland and Boston where she continued 
until ''broken up," a fate that generally overtakes 
most boats, when old age has developed such a struc- 
tural weakness as to render them unsafe. 

Little advance was made with new river boats until 
the monopoly of Fulton and Livingston was broken 
in the twenties, after which capital was quickly found 
for investment in new river craft. 

Two new steamers, the Constellation and Constitution^ 
appeared in 1826. They were a marked improvement 
on the Chancellor Livingston, They cut down both 
the time to Albany, as well as the fares, and became 
great favorites with the public. They were much 
longer and of greater beam. The question was gravely 
considered whether craft of this length could be ex- 
pected to successfully navigate the turns of the river. 

The development of the steamboat in length is 
shown perhaps more clearly in the statement given 
below : 

Feet 
Clermont 130 

Car of Ne'ptune . . . . . .175 

Ohio 192 










03 

a. 



I 






a 

2 



o 
o 



T3 



0) 

o 



Some of the Old-timers 

Albany . 

Swallow 

DeWitt Clinton 

Alida . 

Connecticut . 

Empire State 

Hendrik Hudson 

Oregon 

Isaac Newton 

New World 

C. W, Morse (Peoples' Line, 1907) 

Princeton (Peoples' Line, 1908) . 



21 



Feet 
212 

224 

233 

265 

300 

304 

320 

330 

338 

385 

427 

440 



This list does not begin to include all the more 
prominent passenger boats of the time. There was the 
Rip Van Winkle and the Henry Clay, both popular 
boats with the public. Then there was the Atlas 
and the Express, North America, South America, Boli- 
var, Richmond, James Kent, Independence, Nimrod, 
Champion, Rhode Island, Niagara, Troy, St, Nicho- 
las, Fanny, Berkshire, Manhattan, Glen Cove, United 
States, Sandusky, Ohio, Henry Eckford, Albany, Union, 
Shephard Knapp, Hero, Eagle, Fairfield, Hope, Advo- 
cate, Robt, L. Stevens, James Madison, Cataline, 
Buffalo, Diamond, Hendrik Hudson, Empire, Erie, 
Champlain, Emerald, New Philadelphia, City of Hud- 
son, P, G. Coffin, Legislator, Rockland, Helen, Jenny 
Lind, Westchester, Knickerbocker, Kosciusko, Isaac New- 



22 Old Steamboat Days 

toriy Eureka, Nuhpa, Washingtoriy Curtis Peck, Wave, 
Portsmouth, Geril Jackson, Illinois, Metamora, Iron 
Witch, Roger Williams, Confidence, New Jersey, Sun, 
America, Santa Claus, Thomas Powell and Columbia, 

Of later date were the Mary Powell, Dean Richmond, 
St, John, Daniel Drew, Chauncey Vibbard, Drew, the 
McManus, Andrew Harder, the W, C Redfield, the 
M, Martin, the Catskill now the City of Hudson, the 
John L. Hasbrook now the Marlboro, the D. S. Miller 
now the Poughkeepsie, the Jas, W, Baldwin now the 
Central Hudson, the Thomas Cornell, the Wm, F. 
Romer, the Kaaterskill, the Coxsackie, the Ulster and 
the Chrystenah, all of which helped to earn money for 
their owners and fame for their captains. 

What a train of pleasant reminiscence the names of 
the old steamers invoke. Some will remember them, 
when in their pride of new paint and bunting, they 
endeavored to wrest the record for speed from their 
rivals on the river. Others will recall the journeys 
made to spend midsummer vacation days in the woods 
and mountains. To some, the memories will go back 
to the time of the greatest trip of all their lives — and 
may they have been happy ones — when they went 
honeymooning up the river, for mind you a steamboat 
journey in the days of which we write was quite the 
luxury of travel. Sadder journeys too have followed, 
when loved ones have been carried to the last resting 
place in the churchyards of the little North River 



Some of the Old-timers 2S 

towns from which many famihes have drifted to the 
big cities. 

The favorite sons of the young RepubHc were not 
overlooked in the names of the river steamboats. One 
of them bore the name of Kosciusko, the young Pole 
who fought with the Colonists in the War of Inde- 
pendence, and whose name in those earlier days was 
far more frequently heard than now. He was one of 
Washington's mihtary family, being an aide to the 
General, and was much thought of by all the officers. 
After his return to Poland at the close of our war, he 
was made a prisoner for heading a revolution in his 
native country and imprisoned at St. Petersburg. He 
was finally liberated and revisited the United States in 
1817, and several years after the cadets at West Point, 
erected the monument you can see from the deck of the 
passing boat, on the spot that marks the place where 
Fort Clinton once stood. 

Another was the General Jackson, named in honor of 
" Old Hickory," who, after fighting for his country in 
1812, captured the presidency, and another the Henry 
Clay, after the people's idol, the senator of Kentucky 
who never reached the Presidency, the height of his 
ambition, and whose namesake in the boat line be- 
came a disastrous wreck by burning near Riverdale. 

Many present-day readers who have noted among 
the old-timers the Isaac Newton, may have imagined 
it was Sir Isaac, the observer of the downward tendency 



24 Old Steamboat Days 

of unsuspended apples, that old boatmen honored, but 
such was not the case. Isaac Newton was a Rensselaer 
County man, who was thirteen years old when the first 
steamboat trip was made up the Hudson and retained 
a vivid recollection of that great event until his death 
in 1858. He became a boat owner, established the first 
line of tow boats on the Hudson and in 1835 brought out 
the steamboat Balloon, which was followed by the North 
and South America, Isaac Newton, New World, Hend- 
rik Hudson, etc., whose elegant appointments for the 
accommodation of passengers secured for the Hudson 
River steamboats the appellation of floating palaces. 
Newton caused to be built nearly one hundred steam- 
boats, ocean steamers and river barges. He lived in 
New York City, was one of the principal owners of the 
People's Line of steamboats and an active Baptist in the 
Old Oliver Street Church. He was over sixty-three years 
old when he died. 

Daniel Drew, Chauncey Vibbard, Erastus Corning, 
Capt. A. P. St. John and Dean Richmond were all 
captains of industry in their day and generation, whose 
investments in this line signalized them as proper 
persons for such historical fame as may be secured in 
the name of a steamboat. 

Some of the old-timers have changed their names 
as frequently as a popular divorcee. There is the old 
Tolchester still doing duty, but with a history behind 
her. Boats, indeed, in changing their names are not 




o 



Some of the Old-timers 25 

unlike some women, in trying to have the past for- 
gotten. Who remembers the Tolchester as the Samuel 
M, Felton, new in 1866 ? That is quite a way back, 
but there are gray heads whose memories go back to 
the old Sleepy Hollow which became the Long Branch 
and ran to the resort of the same name, then in the 
height of its popularity with the fashionable set as a 
summer place by the sea. 

The Hudson River Railroad was not completed all 
the way through to Albany until October 8, 1851, 
when it was formally opened. The building had pro- 
gressed as far as Poughkeepsie in 1850 and from that 
point the rest of the journey was made on the Armenia 
and Joseph Belknap, which ran in connection with the 
trains to and from New York City. 

Reginald Fowler, an Englishman, who made a trip 
up the Hudson in the fifties on one of the old boats, 
said of them : " The Americans take great pride in these 
boats and spare no expense on them — the meals are 
well served and the bar produces every kind of bever- 
age. In English steamboats the ladies are generally 
worse accommodated than the stronger sex. In Amer- 
ica this is not the case; the best part of the boat is used 
for their accommodation. All must give way to them. 
No man is admitted into the dining saloon until all 
the ladies are seated at the table, when they rush in 
pellmell. After that should a lady require either, the 
chair is, without ceremony, taken from under you and 



26 Old Steamboat Days 

the plate from before you. No male epicure will here 
be able to gratify his appetite with tid bits. Should he 
make an attempt to do so it will be futile. A lady, sir! 
is considered sufficient. Away goes his plate which can 
only be followed with a sigh; remonstrance would be 
vain. The Americans pride themselves on their 
courtesy to women and consider it a sign of high 
civilization; and they are no doubt right, but it seemed 
to me to be carried to an extreme; that women were 
treated like petted children and that they must often 
feel rather annoyed than pleased by the excessive 
politeness and consideration shown them. At the same 
time it is an honor of this country that an unprotected 
woman of any age may travel through its length and 
breadth from Boston to New Orleans, from New York 
to farthest West without insult or the slightest attempt 
to take advantage of her youth or inexperience." 

Most of the old boats of the Fulton type had a steeple 
engine operating a horizontal cross beam up and down 
which looks odd enough to-day when most river 
steamers have ''walking beams," or are of the propeller 
variety with none at all. The up and down beam 
boats have all been broken up with but one exception 
so far as the author can learn. She is the old Norwich 
still in commission as a towboat on the upper river. 
She is probably the oldest boat on the river, having 
been built in 1836, and among rivermen is known as 
the " Ice King." Because of her stout hull and power- 



Some of the Old-timers 27 

ful engines she has generally been the first boat sent out 
in the spring to break the way through the soft ice. 

Many were the improvements introduced on the new 
boats to attract passengers. Each in turn and degree 
presented something in comfort or increased speed. 
One of the most notable innovations introduced was on 
the steamer Armenia built for the Day Line, so called 
because it makes the entire trip from Albany to New 
York by daylight so as to afford its patrons a view of 
the beautiful river scenery. 

The Armenia had installed upon her a steam calliope 
on which tunes more or less musical were played. The 
resounding echoes awakened in the Highlands were 
somewhat weird and wonderful. The calliope was 
simply a series of steam whistles pitched in various 
keys, of sufficient number to produce the notes re- 
quired to play a tune. Its range was about equal to 
that of the chimes in a church belfry. The Armenia 
was considered something remarkable when she first 
appeared, as indeed she was. The demand, however, 
on her boilers for steam to supply all the steam whistles 
was so great, that the expense of furnishing the pas- 
sengers with steam tunes on the trips up and down the 
river was more than the operating company could 
afford. The calliope was taken out and sent to the 
junk shop. The Armenia ran for years without her 
musical attachment, and was one of the speedy boats 
of the river. 



/ 



28 Old Steamboat Days 

With her calliope on board she came near being an 
exemplification of the steamboat President Lincoln 
used to tell about, as reminding him of some men he 
knew. He said there was a fussy little steamboat on 
the Mississippi that had such a big whistle that every 
time they blew it, it took so much steam, the boat stood 
still. 

There have been two other boats on the river with 
calliopes, the Glen Cove and the General Sedgwick, but 
the *' steam organs" soon ceased to be a novelty and 
in time came to be considered an expensive nuisance. 

Of the many old-timers on the Hudson, the ancient 
and odd-looking steam ferryboat Air Line, that has 
been plying between Saugerties and Tivoli since 1857, 
is entitled to the palm. For a half century this old boat 
has been doing duty and her crew have been so long 
with her they may be regarded as eligible to the ancient 
mariner class. Capt. John M. Burnett has run the 
boat for twenty-seven years, and Charles Taylor who 
began with him as engineer kept his post for twenty- 
two years before he died and was succeeded by George 
Mower who is still on duty. The deckhand, James 
Dickson, began to work on the boat as a boy and is 
now, after ten years of service, a grown man. 

In the genus steamboat, species ferry, one of the most 
interesting specimens extant is the old chain craft still 
doing duty on the creek at Rondout. The chain 
ferries, so numerous in the years gone by, in some sec- 




be 



o 



Pi 



be 






S s 

I-" 



3 

O 



0) 

04 



Some of the Old-timers. 29 

tions of the country, have nearly all disappeared and 
certainly the one at Rondout is an antique. The boat 
is named the Riverside, but is more aflFectionately al- 
luded to by the natives as the " Skilly Pot." 

Three other points of interest should be noted in con- 
nection with early steamboat navigation. The first: 
Nicholas J. Roosevelt built at Pittsburg, Pa., the steam- 
boat New Orleans in 1811 and sailed her down the 
Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the city, in whose 
honor she was named. It was the beginning of the 
wonderful steamboat activity on the western rivers. 
The second; a boat bearing the unique name of Walk- 
in-the-Water, began running on Lake Erie in 1818. 
The third; a sailing vessel, the Savannah, which had 
been altered and provided with a steam engine, sailed 
from Savannah in 1819 for Liverpool and made the 
trip across the Atlantic in twenty-eight days, using both 
sails and steam. She was a side wheel paddle boat and 
the first to successfully demonstrate the application of 
steam to ocean navigation. She was so constructed 
that her paddle wheels could be unshipped in case of 
stormy weather and taken aboard the vessel. 



CHAPTER IV 

RIVAL LINES ON THE RIVER 

FOLLOWING the successful introduction of steam 
navigation on the Hudson, came a long and bitter 
struggle. Fulton and Livingston had a fight on their 
hands from the first to maintain the monopoly cover- 
ing a period of twenty years, given them by the Legis- 
lature of the State of New York, with its extensions for 
additional steamers. 

Not only was the monopoly to steam navigation of 
the river attacked and the State law defied, a law which 
was plainly unconstitutional, but the validity of Fulton's 
patents was even questioned. Expensive litigation fol- 
lowed and the battle between the Fulton and opposing 
interests went on with varying success for several years. 
Chancellor Livingston, who had much influence at 
Albany, secured supplementary legislative enactments, 
but the monopoly to the river was never long main- 
tained. 

One of the earliest rivals for the passenger trade was 
a boat built by Fulton for service on Long Island Sound 



Rival Lines on the River 31 

between New York and New Haven, called the Fulton. 
The following announcement of the reason of her ap- 
pearance on the Hudson River has a suggestive reference 
to the feeling of insecurity that possessed the public as 
to the navigation of the Sound following the second 
war with Great Britain in 1812: 

"The public are respectfully informed that the sub- 
scriber has commenced running the steamboat Fulton 
between the cities of New York and Albany for the 
accommodation of passengers. The boat was built for 
the purpose of plying between New York and New 
Haven, but will be employed on the Hudson River 
until the cessation of hostilities enables the proprietors 
to put her on her destined route. 

'*The Fulton has good accommodations and is a 
very swift boat. The complement of passengers is 
limited to 60 and the price of passage is therefore nec- 
essarily raised to ten dollars. 

"She will start from Albany every Monday morning 
at 9 o'clock and from New York every Friday evening 
at the same hour. 

"For passage apply on board at Steam Boat dock. 

"Albany, May 16, 1814. Elihu F. Bunker." 

Ten dollars was a big sum to pay for a trip to Albany 
and the Fulton did not make much of an inroad on the 
business of the regular line. 

With an increase in the number of boats built on 



32 Old Steamboat Days 

other plans than Fulton's and owned by other interests, 
there came into existence rival lines competing for the 
passenger and freight business of the river. From 1830 
to 1860 there were lively times among the steamboat 
men. 

The fight over the river monopoly was on in earnest 
when a young man who had been running a sailboat 
ferry between Staten Island and New York, began to 
oppose the Fulton-Livingston interests. The young 
man was Cornelius Vanderbilt, afterward the "Com- 
modore " and founder of the family of railroad million- 
aires of that name. His sail-ferryboats had been ex- 
changed for steamboats and he had made considerable 
money. He entered into the Hudson River competi- 
tion with the announcement that his service would 
furnish better boats and lower rates. This was what 
the people were looking for, and the established lines 
had to meet the conditions forced upon them. 

There was a great strife to secure patrons. The 
town was placarded with bills more gaudy and entic- 
ing than the pictures of a side show at a circus. " Run- 
ners" for the rival steamboat lines made the water 
front a lively place. A man or a woman with a '' carpet 
bag " became the legitimate subject of capture for the 
'' runner's " line. Sometimes the man went by one line 
and his satchel by another. Every inducement was 
offered and nervous old ladies who were fearful of 
bursting boilers, were even assured by these *^ runners " 



Rival Lines on the River 3S 

that their steamboats had no boilers. The arts re- 
sorted to by the "runners" and the amount of lung 
power expended would have put to blush the efforts of 
the "barkers" at the Battery at a later day for the 
rival steamboat hues running to Coney Island. 

The high rates went down to one dollar for the trip, 
and eventually to ten cents; subsequently in a later 
competition for passengers, one could go to Albany or 
Troy without paying any fare, but it is said passengers 
had to pay well for their meals and sleeping accom- 
modations. 

" Commodore " Vanderbilt carried on his competition 
for Hudson River travel for nearly twenty years. He 
owned and operated nearly fifty steamboats in that 
period and would probably have continued in it, had 
not the discovery of gold in Cahfornia in 1848-49 
induced him to seek what promised to be a more 
profitable field in Atlantic and Pacific Ocean naviga- 
tion, by way of the Isthmus of Panama. 

There was a great tide of travel and merchandise 
moving toward California in those days and "Com- 
modore" Vanderbilt was among those to reap the 
profit. He also established a transatlantic line and 
made money in that. Having amassed a fortune of 
many millions he turned his attention to the Hudson 
River Railroad which he gradually acquired and again 
began to threaten the interests of the steamboat men, 
who had adjusted the business among themselves on 



34 Old Steamboat Days 

a more profitable basis after "Commodore" Vander- 
bilt's retirement from the competition. For nearly 
fifty years this remarkable man was actively engaged 
in building and operating steamboats. He supple- 
mented his experience on the river by building eleven 
ocean vessels and owning ten others and about the time 
of his retirement from the field of deep-water navigation 
gave the use of his best steamship, the Vanderbilt, to 
the United States, in 1861, as the Civil War was then 
in progress and the Government was sadly in need of 
vessels. 

There were other periods of rife and bitter competi- 
tion on the river. Following the opening of the Harlem 
and the Hudson River Railroads, rates were again cut 
and one could travel from New York to Albany or 
Troy by either boat or train for less than it cost to 
reach midway points on either system. 

To meet the competition of the railroad in March, 
1850, the Hendrik Hudson and Manhattan announced 
a fifty-cent rate^to New York from Albany, the Buffalo 
a twenty-five-cent rate and a passage on the Kosciusko 
could be had for six and one-quarter cents. 

Again, about 1860, the rival lines on the river opened 
a ruinous warfare of rates and one could travel from 
New York to Albany for a dime or without paying 
anything. 

In 1826 there were sixteen steamboats on the Hudson 
and the number had increased to about one hundred 








o 






vXk^^^A^ 



t!^>> 



Rival Lines on the River 35 

by 1840, when steamboating reached the height of its 
glory and usefulness. 

Some of the old companies operating at that period 
were the Union Line, the North River Line, the Con- 
necticut Line, the North River Association Line, Troy 
Line, O. & D. Transportation Co. and the Steam 
Navigation Co., and later the Old Line, People's Line, 
Night Line, Eagle Line and the Day Line were the 
principal companies engaged in river transportation. 

Some idea of what was doing in those days may be 
gathered from the fact that at times no less than seven 
steamboats left Albany for New York on a single day. 
The New World, described as a '"gigantic specimen of 
steamboat architecture" when she appeared, held the 
record for passengers, having taken up the river one 
thousand, in August, 1857. 

The large boats were coining money, even at one 
dollar per trip. It was estimated that with four hun- 
dred and fifty passengers the returns would show for 
tickets $450, berths and staterooms $320, from freight 
$393, a total of $1,163 from which $200, the estimated 
expense of a trip, if deducted, would show a clear profit 
of $963. It was profit like this that stimulated in- 
vestment in steamboat enterprises and eventuated in 
ruinous competition. 

There was much traveling, more on account of busi- 
ness than pleasure. There was neither telegraph nor 
telephone to overcome distances in a second's time and 



36 Old Steamboat Days 

even the railroads had not yet made any appreciable 
inroads on the river traflSc. Passengers traveled by 
steamboat, but much of the freight was still handled 
by sloops. Great industrial trusts had not been formed 
limiting the supply; the country was prosperous and 
competition in every line of business activity con- 
tributed to make these the good old days recalled by 
many, who view with concern the many complex 
problems of the industrial life of the nation that are 
now pressing for solution. 



CHAPTER V 

HOW THE GREAT RIVER MONOPOLY WAS BROKEN 

IT required the brilliant legal attainments of Daniel 
Webster and the conquering persistency of Cor- 
nehus Vanderbilt, to find a way to break the monopoly 
held under the Fulton and Livingston grant from the 
State of New York. 

The State of New Jersey defied the State of New 
York in the controversy, and it was not until the United 
States Supreme Court stepped in and settled the dis- 
pute for all time, that the atmosphere was cleared and 
the free use of the river and bay was opened to steam- 
boats. Incidentally many fundamental questions of 
Constitutional Law, all new to the young Republic, 
were settled, and it did much to establish the authority 
of the Federal Government to regulate navigation and 
other interstate relations. 

One would never believe so many important proposi- 
tions of Constitutional Law, and much less its relation 
to breaking up the great monopoly of steam navigation 
on the Hudson, could be found in the misleading 



38 Old Steamboat Days 

parties named in a certain cause of action in the United 
States Law Reports, designated as Gibbons versus 
Ogden. 

The history behind this action and the case itself is 
one of the most interesting in the books, having to do, 
as it had, with so many questions involved in the 
formative period of the nation. A much more intelli- 
gent understanding of the rapid expansion of steam- 
boat enterprise building on the Hudson, the establish- 
ment of rival lines, the investment of capital and the 
fierce competition that followed will be gained by 
learning who Gibbons and Ogden were and how they 
came to represent the steamboat interests of two 
States. To do this one must learn how the river 
monopoly came to be created. 

John Fitch, who was one of the first experimenters 
with steamboats in this country, had operated a boat 
on the Collect Pond, the site of which was occupied 
by the old Tombs prison in Center Street, New York. 
The pond only covered about four acres and his craft 
was a small rowboat. So great was the interest in the 
experiment, however, he had little difficulty in securing 
from the Legislature of New York, in 1787, the sole 
and exclusive right to navigate vessels by steam in all 
creeks, rivers, bays and waters within the jurisdiction 
of the State for fourteen years. Fitch having died or 
left the State and his experiments having been without 
practical results, the Legislature, in 1798, passed a law 



How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 39 

which repealed the privilege to Fitch and granted it to 
Robert R. Livingston, who had meantime become 
interested in the matter, for a period of twenty years. 
We have seen that Livingston's efforts were also with- 
out results until he had met and become interested 
with Fulton. So it came about that the State law was 
again amended, in 1803, to extend the exclusive privi- 
lege to both Livingston and Fulton for a similar period. 
The trip of the Clermont to Albany, in 1807, had de- 
monstrated steam navigation to be a success and the 
State of New Jersey, regarding the New York laws as 
trespassing upon its sovereignty, passed a statute that 
same year declaring its jurisdiction reached to the 
middle of the Hudson River, as far north as the terri- 
tory of the State extended. 

The next year the Fulton-Livingston interests se- 
cured the passage through the New York Legislature 
of an act extending the exclusive privilege three years 
for each additional steamboat constructed, the whole 
period, however, not to exceed thirty years, and for- 
bidding any and all persons from navigating with 
steamboats the waters of the State which under royal 
grant were held to reach to the Jersey shore, without 
a Fulton-Livingston license, under penalty of for- 
feiture of the boat or vessel. 

New Jersey came to the relief of its citizens with an 
act, in 1811, declaring that New York unjustly claimed 
an exclusive jurisdiction over the waters of that State. 



40 Old Steamboat Days 

It was the time for New York to act, and it did. In 
the same year it passed a law declaring forfeited any 
vessel or boat using steam, found navigating against 
the provisions of the previous laws of the State and a 
means by injunction was provided against removing 
any such boat from the jurisdiction of the State, that 
had been seized. New Jersey could not stand for 
that, so it passed a law in 1813 and again in 1818 
passed other acts to uphold and enforce its statute of 
1811. But the Fulton and Livingston interests went 
on suing out injunctions and making it quite as in- 
effectual for a Jersey man to run a steamboat as it was 
for a New Yorker, without a license such as was called 
for by the New York statute. 

" Commodore " Vanderbilt became busy in 1820 in 
trying to find a way to overthrow the river monopoly. 
The New Jersey Legislature was only too eager to 
help and so an act was passed that year which among 
other things provided that if any of its citizens should 
be '* enjoined or restrained by any writ of injunction 
or order by the Court of Chancery of the State of New 
York, by virtue or under color of any act of the Legis- 
lature of that State, from navigating any boat or vessel 
moved by steam or fire belonging or to belong in part 
or in whole to him, on the waters between the ancient 
shores of the State of New Jersey and New York, the 
plaintiff or plaintiffs in such writ or order shall be liable 
to the person or persons aggrieved for all damages, 



How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 41 

expenses and charges occasioned thereby, to be recov- 
ered with triple costs," etc. 

Here was just the situation the persons attacking 
the Fulton-Livingston monopoly had sought to create. 
Two sovereign States had passed laws in direct conflict. 
The Fulton-Livingston interests sued out their injunc- 
tions against two boats, the Bellona and Stoudingery 
subsequently known as the Mouse-in-the-Mountain. 
" Commodore " Vanderbilt, who was the owner, was 
operating them from the Battery in New York State, 
across the Bay and the Kill von KuU to EUzabethtown, 
a very short trip, the latter place being in New Jersey. 
It was indeed nothing more than a steamboat ferry. 
Thomas Gibbons was the boats' master, and Ogden, the 
other party to the htigation that ensued, was a citizen 
of Newark, N. J., an ex-Governor of the State, holding 
a Fulton-Livingston hcense for the same privilege. 

The case in New Jersey came before the Supreme 
Court of that State in 1822 and the Chief Justice 
(Kirkpatrick) promptly held, after discussing State's 
rights and Constitutional privileges, that New York 
had attempted to interfere vsdth the ancient shores of 
New Jersey and that Mr. Gibbons was entitled to his 
damages and triple costs under the enactment of that 
State. 

The Chief Justice told the parties, however, it was a 
question that ought to go to the United States Supreme 
Court and to the Supreme they went. Gibbons appear- 



42 Old Steamboat Days 

ing as the appellant from the decree of the New York 
court. It was the cause celebre of its day, not only 
the people of the two States being interested, but the 
whole country having taken sides for or against the 
monopoly and there was talk of an interstate war. 
Indeed, a clash of authority had taken place. 

That it was to be a battle for legal giants was early 
manifest, for Vanderbilt and those interested with him 
in breaking the monopoly had retained Daniel Webster, 
then in the zenith of his popularity, and the Fulton- 
Livingston interests, Mr. Oakley and Mr. Emmett, 
the latter having been Fulton's personal counsel and 
friend for many years. Every precaution was taken to 
make the case one of which the Supreme Court would 
have to take cognizance, the Gibbons boats having 
secured a license under the act of Congress of 1793, 
governing vessels employed in the coasting trade, with 
which, it was asserted, the injunction orders of the 
New York State courts unwarrantably interfered. The 
case was not reached in the Supreme Court until the 
February term of 1824. 

Daniel Webster in a masterly brief and argument 
traversed the whole ground of the dispute and con- 
tended that the Legislature of New York had passed 
laws which were unconstitutional, inasmuch as the 
Federal Constitution had declared " Congress shall 
have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, 
and among the several States and with the Indian 







C/2 









How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 43 

tribes." Mr. Webster argued with prevaiUng force 
that the State had attempted to usurp the specially 
delegated powers it had given to Congress; that com- 
merce was navigation and that the Federal regulations 
must apply. 

He contended if New York could grant such a 
monopoly, it might also grant another for other de- 
scription of vessels; for instance, for all sloops. If it 
could grant these exclusive privileges to a few it could 
grant them to many; that is, it might grant them to all 
its own citizens to the exclusion of everybody else. 
But the waters of New York State, insisted Mr. Web- 
ster, were no more the subject of exclusive grants by 
that State than the waters of other States were the sub- 
jects of such grants by those other States. Virginia 
might well exercise over the entrance of the Chesapeake 
all the power that New York could exercise over the 
Bay of New York and the waters on the shore. 

But that was not all. It required no greater power to 
grant monopoly of trade than a monopoly of naviga- 
tion. Of course. New York, if its acts could be main- 
tained, might give an exclusive right to entry for vessels 
into her ports and other States might do the same. 
The people of New York had a right to be protected 
against the steamboat monopoly. The appellant had a 
perfect right to come from New Jersey to New York in 
a vessel owned by himself of the proper legal descrip- 
tion and enrolled and lix^ensed according to the law. 



44 Old Steamboat Days 

The Constitution made the law of Congress supreme, 
when State laws came into opposition with them. It 
was not at all material in that view of the case, whether 
the law of the State was a law regulating commerce, 
a law of police or whatever other name or character it 
might be designated. If this provision was incon- 
sistent with the act of Congress, they were void so far 
as that inconsistency extended. There were other pro- 
visions of the Constitution of the United States with 
which the law of the State of New York was in conflict. 
It was provided "that no State should, without the 
consent of Congress, lay any duty upon tonnage." 
New York had authorized Messrs. Fulton and Living- 
ston to license navigation in the waters of New York. 
They gave licenses out on their own terms and might 
require pecuniary consideration, or, having ascertained 
the tonnage of a vessel, regulate the amount of license 
upon same. That would be a tonnage duty and 
clearly in conflict with the Constitution. Mr. Webster 
also urged that the Constitution gave Congress the 
power to promote the progress of science and useful 
arts, to secure to authors and inventors, for a limited 
time, an exclusive right to their own writings and dis- 
coveries. The States might give exercise of their 
bounty toward authors and inventors and grant them 
bounties, but to attempt to confer exclusive grants as 
a reward was not a power to be exercised by the States. 
Much less could they, under the notion of conferring 



How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 45 

rewards in such cases, grant monopoUes incompatible 
with the exercise of rights held under the laws of the 
United States. 

Mr. Oakley, for the monopoly, argued that the 
power given to Congress by the sovereign State of 
New York was limited, in that all rights not delegated, 
were reserved. The State had a right to legislate on all 
causes of concurrent power, although Congress had acted 
in the same power and upon the same subject-matter. 
The State might make it an oflFense to counterfeit the 
coin of any foreign country within its territory. New 
York had provided for the punishment of counter- 
feiting as had also Congress, all of which showed that 
Congress considered the power to punish such offenses 
as concurrent. A patentee obtained nothing by his 
grant, except an exclusive right, as it related to the 
Union instead of a right limited to the State together 
with more complete and certain remedies to protect 
and enforce that right. If he could not use the thing 
invented against the State law before it was patented, 
he could not use it after it was patented, for his grant 
conveyed no greater right than before existed. It be- 
longed exclusively to the local State Legislatures to 
determine how a man could use his own without injury 
to his neighbors. A patentee could not give rights by 
which a patent could infringe the vested rights of others. 
A patented boat on a ferry could not be used, the 
exclusive use of which had been granted by a State 



46 Old Steamboat Days 

law. A restraint imposed by the laws of New York 
on the navigation of the waters of the State was merely 
an internal regulation of the right to transit or passage 
from one part of the State to another. It was a regula- 
tion which, if even indispensable to public safety, 
Congress could not make. The power to make it, 
therefore, must be in the State. The State law was, in 
fact, only a regulation of the internal trade and right 
of navigation within the territorial limits of the State. 
The power to regulate this was exclusively in the State. 
The State had exercised it in the same manner, both 
on land and water, and the law was valid although 
incidentally it might affect the right of intercourse be- 
tween the States. 

Mr. Emmett, on the same side, undertook to show 
that New York was not the only State which had passed 
such laws. 

Massachusetts, on February 7, 1815, granted to 
J. L. Sullivan a similar grant for steamboats on the 
Connecticut River, twenty-eight years after the ex- 
piration of his patent, which on February 11, 1819, 
was enlarged for two years. 

New Hampshire, in June, 1816, gave him a similar 
privilege on the Merrimac. 

Pennsylvania, on the 26th of March, 1813, gave a 
similar right to James Barnes, from Wilkes-Barre to 
Tioga Point, on the borders of the State of New York. 
Georgia, on the 14th of November, 1814, gave a similar 



How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 47 

grant to S. Howard for all the waters of that State for 
steamboats; and by another act, the 19th of December, 
1817, granted to a company (probably derived from 
Howard) a similar right for steamboats for twenty 
years. 

Tennessee had similarly given a right on the Ten- 
nessee River. 

As Congress had no power to regulate the internal 
commerce of any State, none of its regulations could 
affect so much of the exclusive grant as restrained vessels 
which were used only within the States, nor could it give 
to any man permission to carry on any steamboat navi- 
gation which in its beginning and ending was entirely 
within the waters of the State, for instance, between 
New York and Albany, on Cayuga Lake, or Lake 
Ontario and the St. Lawrence or Niagara to Ogdens- 
burg. The only question was as to navigation between 
foreign countries or another State and New York. If 
the power of Congress over commerce was exclusive, it 
must also have exclusive control over the means of 
carrying it on. No State then would be mad enough 
to expend large sums in building canals as New York 
was doing, susceptible of being used for intercourse 
between the States or foreign commerce, if Congress had 
the right to regulate the navigation and vessels that were 
the medium of foreign trade and that between the 
States. It could not be seriously contended that Con- 
gress could regulate the carrying of passengers to any 



48 Old Steamboat Days 

part of the Union who are travehng to Ballston, 
Saratoga, or any other place for pleasure, and even if 
the object of their passage was to trade, that would 
not legalize the interference of Congress as to the mode 
of their conveyance from place to place. 

Continuing Mr. Emmett asserted: *' If ever the day 
should come when representatives from beyond the 
Rocky Mountains shall sit in the National Legislature, 
if ever a numerous and inland delegation shall wield the 
exclusive power of making regulations for our foreign 
commerce, without community of interest or knowledge 
of our local circumstances, the Union would not stand. 
It cannot be the ordinance of God or nature that it should 
stand. It had been said by very high authority that the 
power of Congress to regulate commerce sweeps away 
the whole subject-matter. If so, it makes a wreck of 
State legislation, leaving only a few standing ruins that 
mark the extent of the desolation. The position, how- 
ever, was not correct." . . . The quarantine laws 
were further appealed to to illustrate Mr. Emmett's posi- 
tion. It was held that they were all considered merely as 
laws of police. They were laws of police but also laws 
of commerce, for such is the nature of that commerce, 
which it was held must be regulated in some manner 
by Congress, that it enters into and mixes itself with 
almost all the concerns of life. The clause in the Con- 
stitution authorizing Congress to make laws respecting 
patents was supposed to present another argument 




g 

> 






How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 49 

against the constitutionahty of the State laws. There 
was no allegation of a patent or a claim of anything 
entitled to be protected by the patent laws, the use 
and enjoyment of which had been interfered with 
by the exclusive grant. If the last steamboat laws, 
enacted since the North River boats were in operation, 
had, instead of using a general phraseology forbid any 
person to use on the waters of the State, steamboats 
constructed or made in the same manner as those made 
by Fulton and Livingston, or in any manner before 
known or used or in any manner invented by a non- 
resident alien, would there be anything for the patent 
laws or power of Congress to operate on in collision 
thereto ? If not, then the State laws were so far good. 
The power to prohibit the use of patented things, either 
generally or locally, must reside somewhere. Could 
Congress prohibit the use of locally injurious, but 
patented things in the waters or the cities or the popu- 
lous towns of New York ? If not, because it had no 
power of regulation or prohibition, where did that 
power reside ? If it resided as it must exclusively in 
the State Legislatures or subordinate authorities, who 
but their constitutents could inquire into the motives or 
propriety or their exercise of that power or the extent 
to which it should be carried ^ A patent could be se- 
cured for anything; if it once issued from the patent 
office as full of evils as Pandora's box, if they were as 
new as those that issued from thence, it was above the 



50 Old Steamboat Days 

restraint and control of the State Legislature and the 
Legislature of the United States and of every human 
authority. The State of New York by a patient and 
forbearing patronage of ten years to Livingston and 
Fulton ... by the tempting inducement of its 
proflFered reward and by the subsequent liberality of 
its contract had called into existence the noblest and 
most useful improvement of the present day . . . 
she had brought into noonday splendor an invaluable 
improvement to the intercourse and consequent happi- 
ness of man which without her aid would perhaps have 
scarcely dawned upon our grandchildren. She had not 
only rendered this service to her own citizens, but the 
benefits of her policy have spread themselves over the 
whole Union . . . and the happy and reflecting 
inhabitants of the States . . . might well ask them- 
selves whether next to the Constitutions under which 
they lived there was a single blessing they enjoyed from 
the art and labor of man greater than that they had 
derived from the patronage of the State of New York 
to Robert Fulton. 

Finally came William Wirt of Virginia, the famous 
Attorney-General of the United States, amid the array 
of counsel, with the argument in support of Mr. Web- 
ster's, that the State law was in conflict with powers 
vested in Congress and, even if concurrent, as claimed, 
it was in conflict and, therefore, void. He asked the 
court to *' interpose its friendly hand and extirpate the 



How the Great River Monopoly was Broken 51 

seeds of anarchy which New York had sown. The war 
of legislation which had already commenced will, ac- 
cording to its usual course, become a war of blows. 
Your country will be shaken with civic strife. Your 
repubUcan institutions will perish in the conflict, your 
Constitution will fall and the last hope of the nations 
will be gone." 

Mr. Chief Justice John Marshall was quite equal to 
the important decision he was called upon to render 
in the steamboat case. In doing so, he added one more 
to the important opinions he rendered in fixing fast and 
sure the legal foundation the young nation required to 
make its new and untested Constitution a workable, 
respected organic law. In an opinion fully reviewing 
the important case before him, and even apologizing 
for its great length, he held that Congress in being 
given the power to regulate commerce, was given the 
power to regulate navigation. It was as expressly 
granted, as if the term navigation had been added to the 
word commerce already in the Constitution. "But," 
said he, "the power to regulate commerce does not 
look to the principle by which boats were moved. 
That power was left to individual discretion. . . . 
The act demonstrates the opinion of Congress that 
steamboats may be enrolled and licensed in common 
with vessels using sails. They are, of course, entitled to 
the same privileges and can no more be restrained 
from navigating waters and entering ports, which are 



52 Old Steamboat Days 

free to such vessels, than if they were wafted on their 
voyage by the winds instead of being propelled by the 
agency of fire. The one element may be as legitimately 
used as the other; for every commercial purpose au- 
thorized by the laws of the river, and the act of a State 
inhibiting the use of either to any vessel, having a 
hcense under the act of Congress, comes, we think, in 
direct collision with that act." 

This opinion of the Chief Justice, supported as it was 
by a concurring opinion on some additional grounds by 
Mr. Justice Johnson, rang a death-knell to the Fulton- 
Livingston monopoly on the Hudson River and New 
York Bay. The decree which the United States Su- 
preme Court issued declared "the several laws of the 
State of New York which prohibit vessels licensed ac- 
cording to the laws of the United States, from navigat- 
ing the waters of the State of New York, by means of 
fire or steam, repugnant to the Constitution and void." 

It was certainly a great victory. The battle had been 
fought for years. Fulton had been dead nine years and 
it was only the Livingston contingent that witnessed 
the overthrow of the monopoly that had been enjoyed 
for so long a period. We have already noted how 
promptly capital became interested in steamboat en- 
terprises and how the rivers became crowded with 
navigation which continued for a quarter of a century, 
until the steam railroads began to dispute with the 
river craft for both the passenger and freight trade. 



CHAPTER VI 



STEAMBOAT EVOLUTION 



A RAPID evolution in steamboat construction fol- 
lowed the breaking of the great river monopoly. 
The boat builders, freed from the domination of the 
Fulton-Livingston interests, were quick to develop new 
ideas that before had no encouragement from capital, 
which had been debarred from entering that particular 
field of enterprise. 

The shipyards of New York and Greenpoint and 
along the Hudson were more than busy with the large 
number of boats under construction, and the activity 
in this hne continued for many years. 

Some of the builders of the larger boats were Henry 
Eckford, Brown & Bell, Blossom, Smith & Dimon, 
George CoUyer, William H. Brown of New York, 
C. Bergh, Devine & Burtis, John Englis, William 
Capes, Lawrence & Sneden, E. S. Whitlock of Brook- 
lyn, M. S. AUison of Jersey City, WiUiam Brown of 
Hyde Park, Mr. Kenyon of Albany, Morton & Ed- 



54 Old Steamboat Days 

monds and Van Loan & Magee of Athens and Marvel 
& Company of Newburgh. 

Robert McQueen and James P. Allaire built nearly 
all the engines for the river boats constructed before 
1830, but those for the Swallow, Rochester and other 
famous boats of that period were from the West Point 
Foundry, a plant noted for its output of machinery. 
James Cunningham, Hogg & Delamater, Fletcher, 
Harrison & Company, T. F. Secor & Company and 
the Neptune Iron Works were the most active producers 
of steamboat engines during the forties and fifties. 

Following the example set by Fulton in the con- 
struction of the boiler for the Clermont^ the boilers of 
all the best boats were built of copper as iron was 
found to be so liable to burst, and this fact made the 
construction of new boats very costly. The Clermonfs 
boiler weighed 4,399 pounds and at 2s. 2d. a pound 
cost <£476. lis. 2d. as is carefully noted by Mr. Fulton 
in his cash account covering the expenses of building 
this first steamboat. The boiler of the Chancellor Liv- 
ingston weighed 44,000 pounds and that of the James 
Kent 60,000 pounds, which at recent rates would have 
made the copper in the boiler alone worth nearly 
$15,000. As it was, the Kent's boilers were worth 
nearly one-third of the cost of the boat. 

It was not until 1830 that tubular boilers were in- 
troduced on the boats, the Novelty being the first to 
have that distinction, and it was some ten years later 



Steamboat Evolution 55 

that the burning of anthracite coal under the boilers 
was successfully introduced by Isaac Newton on the 
North and South America and the expense of fuel was 
cut down one-half. The large wood-burning boilers had 
required a prodigal expenditure of cordwood, which also 
demanded a large amount of deck room for stowage, and 
the introduction of hard coal fuel was considered one of 
the greatest advancements made in steamboat building. 

Another of Isaac Newton's successful experiments 
was a small boat, the Balloon, built in 1839. She was 
one hundred and sixty feet in length and eighteen feet 
beam, but was very fast, having extra large paddle 
wheels for her size. 

He also designed the Isaac Newton in 1846 and the 
New World in 1847 and they ran for several years as 
day boats. In 1855, however, both were converted 
into night boats, the latter being lengthened some sixty 
feet and a double tier of staterooms added. When 
these two boats appeared after their alterations. New 
Yorkers opened their eyes, and they were called float- 
ing palaces. Newton had introduced the grand saloon 
extending through two decks and surrounded with 
galleries. The New World was fitted up with Corin- 
thian columns and trim and the Newton in Gothic. 
The saloons were lighted with gas, the cabin furnish- 
ings were elaborate and in many respects nothing 
approaching in elegance the two new night boats had 
ever before been seen afloat. The many new accom- 



56 Old Steamboat Days 

modations that these boats afforded travelers not only 
made a distinctive type for river boats which has since 
been closely followed, but did much to establish tte 
popularity of the line with which they were identified 
and which has since been largely retained. The New 
World continued in the service until her mishap in 
1861 and the Newton until she burned in December, 
1863. 

As early as 1844 there was an iron hull steamer on 
the river named the Iron Witch. She was subsequently 
rebuilt and named the Erie. The hull and engines 
were both constructed by Hogg & Delamater of New 
York. She was two hundred and twenty-five feet long 
and twenty-seven feet beam. She ran from New York 
to Albany. It was not until within a comparatively 
short time that any further attempts were made to 
introduce iron or steel into the hull construction of the 
river boats. All the recent additions to the river fleet 
have, however, steel hulls and water-tight bulkheads. 

The boats of the Fulton type were built with their 
boilers well down in the hull of the boat, but in 1826, 
the New Philadelphia appeared with her boilers built 
on her guards, a form of construction that prevailed 
for many years. 

Many still regard the old boats, such as the Mary 
Powell and Dean Richmond, more picturesque, afford- 
ing glimpses of the stokers tossing the fuel into the 
fiery furnaces, than the newer boats which have re- 







^^ "..Piw'i ""■ "iifei"^'"r^^" '" 







The De Witt Clinton 

Which ran with a sister boat, the Victory, between New York and 
Albany. From a drawing by S. W. Stanton 




The Champlain 

KnoTNTi as a "Four Piper." She had four boilers, two engines and 

two walking beamss Reproduced by permission from 

"American Steam Vessels" 



Steamboat Evolution 57 

verted to the type of boats with the boilers down in the 
hold of the vessel. It is not at all likely, however, that 
any more steamers will be built of that variety, as the 
modern boats afford much more deck room than those 
of the other construction. 

The propeller type of steamboat has never attained 
much popularity on the Hudson River, though there 
have been several excellent specimens of that class in 
service and some smart boats of that description of 
comparatively recent construction are now running on 
regular lines. They are apparently too narrow in 
beam to afford an opportunity for lofty construction, 
grand saloons and imposing cabin vistas, which the 
public seem to desire in traveling on the river. 

All of the old boats were stiffened and hulls made 
to carry the enormous load of engines and boilers by 
resorting to a "hog frame." This was a framework of 
heavy timbers, built up truss fashion to which lifting 
rods were attached. These heavy "hog frames" are 
no longer resorted to in modern built boats and the 
trusses are entirely out of sight, giving the newer ves- 
sels a much neater and smarter appearance. 

With the advance in mechanical appliances came 
the steam steering devices, rendering it unnecessary 
to have four stalwart quartermasters to handle the 
big double steering wheels in the pilot houses of the 
larger steamers ; electric dynamos for lights supplanted 
the cumbersome gas machines that were in turn an 



58 Old Steamboat Days 

advance on the kerosene cabin lights, and feathering 
wheels have made it possible to so reduce the diameter 
of the paddles, that it is now possible to walk the length 
of the lower deck without climbing over the crank 
shaft or '' ducking " to go under it. 

The evolution of the steamboat from the primitive 
Clermont, on which Fulton sailed up the Hudson one 
hundred years ago, to the boats that now daily ply 
the river^ affording every convenience to the passen- 
gers to be found in a first-class hotel on land, is truly 
wonderful. 



CHAPTER VII 



OLD RIVER CAPTAINS 



THE captain of a river steamer in the old days and 
to-day is by far the most important man on the 
boat. He must be a trusty, experienced man and 
should be at all times agreeable to the passengers. 
Those on the Hudson have been for the most part men 
of this character and many became popular with the 
traveling public. 

Before the days of a la carte restaurants on the boats, 
the captain had his table in the dining saloon, and the 
dinner hour aboard the steamboat was one of the 
features of the trip. Under the present regulations the 
captains, though always on duty and men of character 
and abihty, are not as much in evidence to the average 
passenger as in the old days. 

Capt. Samuel Jenkins commanded the Clermont 
after she was renamed the North River, in 1808, the 
Car of Neptune was in command of Captain Roorback 
in 1810 and the Paragon, in 1813, was in charge of 
Captain Wiswall. These men were, accordingly, the 



60 Old Steamboat Days 

pioneer steamboat captains of the river. They have 
been followed by many worthy successors, in whose 
charge millions of passengers have traveled in safety 
and comfort. 

Some of the captains on the steamers in the thirties 
and forties were H. Moore of the Olive Branchy 
Fountain of the Niagara and C. Benton of the William 
Penriy on the Union Line; Captain Cochran of the 
Chancellor Livingston, T. Wiswall of the James Kent, 
S. Wiswall of the Richmond and Benton of the Saratoga, 
on the North River Line ; Captain Bartholomew of the 
Hudson, on the Connecticut Line; R. G. Cruttenden 
of the Constellation and Wiswall of the Constitution, 
on the North River Association Line. Capt. D. Peck 
sailed the Swift Sure and Captain Seymour the Com- 
merce, of the Steam Navigation Company; Captain Peck 
the Henry Eckford and Captain Drake the Sun, of the 
O. & D. Line; while Captain Sherman had the Chief 
Justice Marshall and Captain Fitch the New London, 
of the Troy Line. 

Captain Cruttenden was one of the last survivors of 
this class and when in command of the old Constella- 
tion he used to boast he never lost a trip or a life, had 
made one thousand one hundred and sixty-two trips 
with the old boat and carried over 172,000 passengers. 

Most of the early river captains reached a hearty 
old age. Captain Bunker, who ran the Fulton up the 
Hudson during the war of 1812, lived until he was 




s 

o 



CO 

a; 

I 

1-3 






^ 
H 



c3 
O 



Old River Captains 61 

seventy-five years of age, dying in 1847, and must have 
rejoiced to note the great development in an industry 
in which he was a pioneer. Another veteran of the 
river, Capt. Samuel Wiswall, lived to be sixty-three 
years old and died in New York in 1836. He is buried 
in Hudson. 

Among the river captains of 1847 were Capt. A. 
Gorham, commanding the Troy; Capt. H. J. Kellogg, 
the Niagara; Capt. W. W. Tupper, the Columbia; 
Capt. R. B. Macy, the Empire; Capt. W. H. Peck, the 
Isaac Newton ; Capt. R. G. Cruttenden, the Hendrik 
Hudson; Capt. R. H. Furey, the North America; 
Capt. Thomas N. Hulse, the South America; Capt. 
G. O. Tupper, the Alida; Capt. A. DeGroot, the Roger 
Williams; Capt. J. S. Odell, the Columbus; Capt. 
Samuel Johnson, the Thomas Powell; Capt. Charles 
Halstead, the Superior and Capt. John Samuels, the 
Emerald, 

Many odd characters were to be found among the 
old captains. Of one it is told he used to boast he paid 
one hundred dollars to bury his wife and it was worth 
every cent of it! He, however, was an exception to 
the generally good humored river captains and never 
came to the dignity of commanding a passenger boat. 
He was a mighty good navigator, however, and had the 
reputation of putting things through in spite of wind 
or weather. 

Captain Houghton of the old Rochester was one of the 



62 Old Steamboat Days 

greatest characters among the old captains. He was 
familiarly known as ''Pug" Houghton, his nose sug- 
gested the cognomen, and he was a great story-teller. 
He was a stage driver in Vermont when a younger man 
and some of his tales of the road were hair-raisers. He 
used to tell of frightening off some robbers at a wayside 
tavern with a brass candlestick which he held up as a 
pistol, and, as if to convince all doubters, he used to 
say, in the morning the heels of two boots were found 
on the doorsill, torn off the bold marauders footwear 
as the captain had jammed the door to upon them. 
''Pug" Houghton always had a knot of passengers 
about him on the river boats as he recounted his ex- 
periences on the high seas, though there were those 
who claimed he never sailed beyond Sandy Hook in all 
his life. 

" Uncle " Daniel Drew, who had two steamboats, and 
a theological seminary in New Jersey named after him, 
was an able financier and a good business manager in 
general. He was greatly surprised on a certain occasion 
to find one of his captains taking a drink at the bar 
while the boat was running. The captain was equally 
surprised at being found at the bar by " Uncle " Daniel. 

Capt. was, however, a good bluff and held his 

ground, talking business as he drank his whiskey and 
in the presence of the owner of the line planked down 
a quarter on the bar for the drink. 

"What," said Mr. Drew to the captain, in sur- 




H >.2 



> 



^ ^ 



Old River Captains 63 

prise, '^do you have to pay for your drinks on this 
boat?" 

"Always," replied the captain, without the quiver 
of an eyelash. " Fact is," said he, " Mr. Drew, I find 
it the best means of interposing a most desirable re- 
straint on natural tendencies." 

"Uncle" Daniel left the captain quite satisfied he 
was a very moderate drinker, if he had to pay steam- 
boat prices for drinks, but had the bartender not sought 
out the captain and restored the quarter of a dollar 
before the end of that particular trip, the chances are 
ten to one he would have lost his job. 

One of the best known river captains was Capt. A. L. 
Anderson who had the Mary Powell built for him and 
commanded her for years. She was not only the 
smartest boat on the river in her day, but has always 
been a " lucky " boat, never having met with a serious 
accident. She lost one of her smokestacks in a big 
blow in the Highlands on one of her trips, many years 
ago, but is said to have finished her trip on time. She 
was owned for years by the Anderson family, but was 
recently purchased by the Day Line. There is still a 
Captain Anderson on board of her, however. He is 
A. E. Anderson, a son of the original captain, and as he 
has been running the Powell for over thirty years him- 
self, is in the veteran class. 

Capt. S. J. Roe, who has commanded the Rip Van 
Winkle, Drew, Dean Richmond and Adirondack in his 



64 Old Steamboat Days 

day, is still living, hale and hearty, over eighty years 
of age, in Albany, N. Y. His memory goes back to 
the days of the Swallow in 1845, and he took a party 
of excursionists down the river in the Belle to view the 
wreck of the old boat. Captain Post, who ran the St. 
John, has been dead for a number of years and so has 
Capt. ''Dave" Hitchcock who put the Chauncey 
Vibbard through by daylight and retained his popu- 
larity as a captain as long as he ran upon the river. 

The captains alone should not be remembered of 
the great steamboat days of the thirties, forties and 
fifties. The times developed many engineers, men of 
resource and ingenuity, who made their boats jump 
through the water under the impulse of every pound 
of steam that could be crowded on the boilers, in the 
great efforts to make records for speed. Many of the 
older men, on the decline of steam navigation, follow- 
ing the opening of the railroads, took to the deep water 
business and became chief engineers on ocean steam- 
ships and it would be interesting, indeed, if one were 
able, to follow the old-timers of the starting bar in 
their wanderings from their river habitat. 



CHAPTER VIII 



FAST TIME ON THE RIVER 



NO sooner had the Clermont made it possible to re- 
duce the time of the journey to Albany to thirty- 
two hours, than the steamboat builders began to at- 
tempt to make a further reduction. 

Each succeeding steamer cut down the time of the 
passage. In 1817 it had been reduced to eighteen 
hours and in 1826 the Constellation and Constitution 
had made the trip to Albany in fifteen hours. By 1836 
a new boat, the North America, had cut it down to ten 
hours and the improvement went steadily on until the 
Chauncey Vibbard, in 1864, made it in an even seven 
hours, beginning and finishing the trip in daylight, 
which had long been the ambition of the steamboat 
captains. Now the new Hendrick Hudson of the Day 
Line leaves New York at 8.30 a. m., makes nine land- 
ings, arrives at Albany at 5.30 with the regularity of a 
railroad time table and could, if pushed, do a great 
deal better. 

The improvement in time will be readily appreciated 



66 



Old Steamboat Days 



hours 


minutes 


32 


— 


18 


— 


15 


— 


10 


— 


7 


45 


7 


43 


7 


30 


7 


42 


6 


50 


6 


42 



by the appended statement of the performances of the 
old-timers on the run to Albany: 

1807 Clermont 

1817 Chancellor Livingston 

1826 Constellation 

1836 North America 

1849 Alida . 

1851 New World . 

1852 Francis Skiddy 
1860 Armenia 
1862 Daniel Drew 
1864 Chauncey Vibbard 

The Mary.Powelly built in 1861, many times recon- 
structed and improved and still running, was for years 
conceded to be the queen of the river steamers in 
point of speed. She averages twenty miles an hour at 
all times, and has been pushed to twenty-six miles. 

In 1884, the steam yacht Stilletto, built entirely for 
speed and fresh from the hands of her builders, the 
Herreshoffs of Bristol, R. I., tried to wrest the laurels 
from the old boat and succeeded by a narrow margin. 
On June 10th in a race of thirty miles she beat the 
Powell by two miles, covering the distance in one hour 
and fifteen minutes. It was not a bad showing, how- 
ever, for the old river queen and her owners have 
always claimed she could have done much better had 
she been put into first class condition for the race. 







o 

1/3 



o 

O 



c3 






^ 



o 



J3 



CO 
00 



3 

« 



Fast Time on the River 67 

Similar claims were made for the Stilletto, her builders 
claiming twenty-seven miles an hour for their boat. 
The Stilletto set low in the water so as to present as 
little surface for wind resistance as possible. She was 
somewhat of the same type as the Vamoose, another 
boat built for speed in later years. Both were the fore- 
runners in a degree of the motor boats now so popular. 

This special form of construction had been at- 
tempted, however, many years before. Burden built 
a cigar-shaped boat which he called Helen. Though 
it was expected she would be very speedy, she turned 
out a failure and was soon abandoned. 

In the attempt to turn out fast boats and cut down 
the time of the river, some boats with four smoke- 
stacks and as many boilers, with two engines and two 
walking beams were built. The Erie and Champlain 
were "four pipers," but they did not realize the ex- 
pectations of their builders. Even at this late date the 
Albany and New York of the Day Line only boast of 
three smokestacks. The improvement in speed has 
been secured with more perfectly constructed ma- 
chinery and feathering paddle wheels, than anything 
else. 

The old captains were frequently given to speeding 
their boats, and many tales are told in the pilot houses 
and engine rooms to this day of the old craft that 
made sprints in order to hold the record of the smartest 
boat on the river. 



68 Old Steamboat Days 

When Hudson River captains raced their boats they 
did it for all they were worth. Trips that could be 
made with eighteen cords of wood and twenty-five 
pounds of steam, would call for twenty-five cords of 
wood and sixty pounds of steam, if the other boat was 
a good one and the race was at all close. The steam 
gauges were plugged and the safety valves were weighted 
down so that the boiler pressure frequently became 
threefold what it should be. 

In the fall of 1836, the Swallow and the Roch- 
ester had a memorable race, starting from Jersey City 
at 4 p. M., November 8th, and it was a hot one. The 
boats were within a short distance from each other all 
the way up the river, with the tide against them. The 
Swallow's engine became disabled near Hudson and 
she slowed down for a few moments and then dashed 
ahead again, but the Rochester reached the Overslaugh 
Bar, five miles below Albany, first, in eight hours and 
fifty-seven minutes, and the Swallow in nine hours and 
two minutes, just five minutes behind her rival. Though 
the race was the Rochester's it was generally admitted 
that the Swallow was the better boat. 

The North America and the Champlain were always 
in for a race whenever their sailing hours permitted of 
it, and each boat had its enthusiastic backers, for the 
passengers generally became as much interested in 
these river contests, as the captains themselves. 

The Columbia, a new boat, made her appearance in 



Fast Time on the River 69 

1849 and immediately demonstrated to the older craft 
on the river, she was to be reckoned with. Her spurts 
with the North America were among the exciting 
brushes of the period and she crowded the older boat 
to the rear, making the run to Hudson, where she be- 
longed, in eight hours and a quarter. 

The Kosciusko and Telegraph were always pushing 
one another for the record. Many times they tried 
conclusions and when a race between the two was on, 
it mattered not if a score or more passengers were 
waiting at one of the announced landings, the boats 
rushed by, leaving the hapless people on the dock, so 
great was the rivalry between the two captains. The 
Telegraph eventually proved the better boat and kept 
the record until a newer vessel sent the old speeder to 
the rear. 

The rivalry for the speed record became so great 
between two of the boats, the Oregon, owned by George 
Law, and the Cornelius Vanderbilt, owned by " Com- 
modore" Vanderbilt, then running on Long Island 
Sound, that a race for $1,000 a side was arranged be- 
tween them, which took place on the Hudson River 
on June 1, 1847. The Vanderbilt was a new boat. 
The race started at the Battery and both boats got 
away at eleven o'clock, a great throng of people being 
on hand to witness the contest. For thirty miles up 
the river the boats kept side by side, but the Oregon 
passed the Vanderbilt as she approached the stake 



70 Old Steamboat Days 

boat off Ossining and was half a length ahead at 
that point. In passing the Vanderbilt, the Oregon was 
bumped by her rival and damaged her wheelhouse 
considerably. On the way down the river the Oregon s 
coal gave out, but the captain and crew resorted to 
tactics that had been followed before, in the days of 
exciting steamboat racing. The woodwork of the 
berths, chairs, benches, furniture of staterooms and 
everything else that would burn was put under the 
boilers to keep up steam. She finished the race at the 
Battery about twelve hundred feet ahead of the Van- 
derbilt, having covered the seventy miles in three hours 
and fifteen minutes with the tide against her going 
north and with her on the return. The owners of the 
Oregon got the $1,000 stake and possibly expended 
more than that restoring the joiner work on their boat. 

The Alida and the Hendrik Hudson had a great 
race from New York to Albany in 1849. The first 
named reached Albany at ^,55 p. m., having left 
New York at 7.00 a. m., made one landing and beat 
the Hudson by fifteen minutes, both boats having an 
ebb tide all the way up the river. 

Captain DeGroot of the Reindeer would never admit 
there was a boat on the river that could pass him and 
he was frequently called upon to prove it, which he did 
to the discomfiture of his rivals. The Henry Clay 
was designed to beat her, but never did. The New 
Worldy with her enormous piston stroke of fifteen feet 



Fast Time on the River 71 

which has never been equaled, though fourteen feet 
strokes were not uncommon, was thought to be a 
match for the Reindeer, and she proved to be, though 
Captain DeGroot would never admit it, always claiming 
something went wrong with the machinery when he 
found the other boat was pulling away from him. 

The St. John wrested the laurels from the Vanderbilt 
in 1863 and in the same year the new day boat Chauncey 
Vihhard made Albany in seven and a half hours, which 
she cut down the year following to six hours and forty- 
two minutes. 

Steamboat racing on the Hudson virtually came to 
an end in 1852, when the Steamboat Inspection Bill, 
passed by Congress, became a law. It was well racing 
was made unlawful, for it had developed recklessness 
and a disregard for the safety and convenience of pas- 
sengers. Then, too, bursting boilers were of too fre- 
quent occurrence and there was good reason, though 
we are apt to smile at their fears with our experience 
in new and improved mechanical devices — for sensible 
people to prefer traveling on "safety barges" hav- 
ing the benefit of steam propulsion without sleeping 
above an overtaxed boiler. 

The fear of bursting boilers was the one uppermost 
in the minds of the early steamboat travelers. An 
incident will illustrate the promptness with which the 
boat owners met all objections: 

The steamboat New London was advertised to leave 



72 Old Steamboat Days 

that part of the pier opposite the Eagle Tavern, Albany, 
for New York, one afternoon at 4 o'clock. A prejudice 
existed at the time against iron boilers, which were 
thought to be unsafe. It was, therefore, advertised 
that the New London had a copper boiler, an overnight 
transformation said to have been accomplished by a 
liberal application of copper colored paint. 

The steamboats in their day tried to do what the 
telegraph does for the newspapers to-day. In 1829 
we read that the President's Message which was sent to 
Congress on Tuesday, December 8th, reached New 
York fifteen and one-half hours afterward and was 
rushed up the river on the steamer Albany and arrived 
at that city in time to be published on Thursday morn- 
ing, which was an event considered to have been one 
of "unprecedented dispatch." 

It will certainly pay you the next time you journey 
up the river to take note of the long low embankment 
extending out in the water, nearly a mile from the shore, 
at the point where the Palisades suddenly terminate 
as if cut down by some mighty hand. The narrow 
strip of land looks more like a breakwater than any- 
thing else, and close observation will show it is sadly 
in need of repair. It is now more of an obstruction to 
navigation than anything else, and should have been 
removed long ago. 

The place is Piermont and it is the "pier" that 
extends such a great distance out in the river. The 



Fast Time on the River 73 

"mont" or "mount" is at the shore end of the pier 
and if you have a pair of marine glasses with you, on 
looking well up on the hillside you will find a large 
yellow building that was once a hotel. Both the pier 
and the hotel are the silent witnesses of the busy, 
hustling times that once marked the place, but now 
long since gone. 

Piermont was the eastern terminal in those days, of 
the Erie Railway and was the nearest possible point 
the road could get to New York City. The New Jersey 
State line reaches down to the Hudson about two miles 
south of Piermont. About the last place you can note 
in New York State below Piermont is Snedens Land- 
ing, a point of interest, however, for General Corn- 
wallis landed there with six thousand British troops 
in 1776 and marched on Fort Lee further down on the 
Pahsades. 

When the Erie Railroad was built under a New 
York charter. New Jersey put up the bars against the 
new railway entering that State. 

It was the talk those days that the old Camden and 
Amboy road controlled the entire railroad situation 
in New Jersey. It was certainly a powerful combina- 
tion, which has since become incorporated in the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad system. At any rate, it was powerful 
enough to make the Erie get to New York by way of 
Piermont. This was the reason the long pier was 
built; tracks laid upon it and the passenger trains run 



74 Old Steamboat Days 

out to a steamboat ferry landing. From this point all 
the passengers were carried to New York City by 
steamboats and the railroad attempted to overcome 
the serious handicap, by making the trips between 
Piermont and the city in the shortest time possible. 
The freight was lightered down the river. 

It can readily be imagined what a scene of busy activity 
the old pier must have been in times past, though one 
will look in vain for any signs of life there now, with 
the exception of a few manufactories that have located 
at the shore end of the pier. The Piermont branch of 
the Erie is still in existence, and freight cars are brought 
down the steep grades to the river level at that point 
for the benefit of local shippers. 

The old hotel on the hillside has been a school, a 
conservatory of music and a boarding-house since the 
busy days when it was a popular hostelry at which 
fashionable New Yorkers bound west stopped over 
night, so as to take the first morning trains, without 
being forced to leave the city at an inconveniently early 
hour on the Erie's fast steamboat express ferry from 
the foot of Duane Street. 



CHAPTER IX 

DISASTERS OF RIVER TRAVEL 

ACCIDENTS have attended the navigation of the 
river. Since the introduction of steam, boats have 
sunk, burned and been in coUision on many occasions. 
Frequently there was an attendant loss of life. Never, 
however, has there been such a disaster as that of the 
burning of the General Slocum, on the East River in 
broad daylight, June 15, 1904, when nine hundred and 
fifty-eight lives were lost and one hundred and seventy- 
five injured, or the more recent catastrophe of the 
Joy Liner Larchmont, on the Sound off Block Island, 
February 11, 1907. Then nearly two hundred souls 
perished in the icy waters, as the result of the collision 
between the steamer and the schooner Henry Knowl- 
ton. 

Possibly the nearness of the shores on either side of 
the river, the more careful supervision of the boats by 
the operating hnes, the watchfulness of the captains 
or indeed sailor's luck may account for the com- 
paratively small loss that has attended the navigation 



76 Old Steamboat Days 

of the Hudson. From whatever cause the fact arises, 
it certainly is a matter of satisfaction to note the toll 
of the dead is comparatively small, when the years and 
number of passengers transported are taken into con- 
sideration. 

Still the Hudson is a treacherous river to navigate 
in a fog and at all times there are shoals and rocks 
for the pilots to avoid. It requires an expert at the 
wheel to take a boat through the apparently land- 
locked turns and reaches at the Highlands. Much has 
been accomplished in later years by the Federal and 
State Governments erecting range marks on the shores, 
building lighthouses on the most dangerous points and 
deepening the channel by dykes above New Baltimore. 
Many a boat has gone aground on the bar below 
Albany and remained a prisoner there for hours, an 
experience to which the river traveler of to-day is 
seldom subjected. 

The Clermont alone of the three earlier boats on the 
river, was continued long enough in the service as the 
North River to receive an honorable discharge by being 
" broken up." Both the Car of Neptune and the Para- 
gon sank, the latter in 1825. 

The General Jackson on a trip from Peekskill to 
New York exploded her boilers near Grassy Point and 
several passengers were killed. '' Commodore " Van- 
derbilt's brother Jacob was her captain at the time. 

The North America became a wreck when moored 



Disasters of River Travel 77 

to her dock in Albany in the spring of 1839. She was 
carried down by the breaking up of the ice in the Island 
Creek. No lives were lost. 

The steamboat Swallow, one of the most popular 
and speedy boats of her time, on her way down the 
river, in a snow squall, from Albany, on Monday 
evening, April 7, 1845, met with disaster. She was 
under command of Captain Squires and was known as 
a night boat. She left Albany in the evening and 
reached New York the next morning. When near 
Athens, which is nearly opposite from the city of 
Hudson, she struck a rock, took fire, broke in two and 
rapidly sank. There is little doubt but that she was 
racing with the Express and Rochester. The reporter 
of the Hudson Rural Repository who, with characteristic 
enterprise, was on the spot, in his account of the 
disaster says : 

"On Monday evening, April 7th, the steamboat 
Swallow, Captain A. H. Squires, was on her passage 
from Albany to New York, and when opposite this 
city, in the Athens channel, ran upon a little, rocky 
island, broke in two, and in a few minutes sank. The 
alarm was immediately spread in Athens, and a large 
number of citizens soon rallied to the scene of disaster, 
and happily succeeded in rescuing many lives. Soon 
after the steamboats Express and Rochester came down 
and promptly rendered what assistance was in their 
power, taking many passengers with them to New 



78 Old Steamboat Days 

York. The Swallow had on board a large number of 
passengers, but the exact loss of life is at present un- 
known [the number lost proved to be about fifteen]. 
The night was exceedingly dark, with a heavy gale, 
snow and rain, and very cold. Our citizens are yet 
busy about the wreck." 

The rocks on which the Swallow was wrecked made 
a little island formerly known as Noah's Brig, es- 
pecially among the lumbermen, who ran rafts of logs 
and lumber down the river. It derived that name, 
according to the "History of Columbia County," from 
the following incident : " One night a large number of 
rafts were coming down the west channel, one of them 
being under the command of a man who was known 
among his comrades by his Christian name, 'Noah.' 
As the rafts neared this point Noah espied in the dim 
light a dark object riding upon the waters, which he at 
once decided to be a brig under sail, and as soon as he 
had approached near enough he hailed it, ' Brig ahoy ! ' 
No response. Again, in stentorian tone, his hail rang 
out upon the night air, but still no attention was paid, 
and the mysterious craft kept unswervingly to its 
course. This exasperated Noah, and his third hail 
was 'Brig ahoy! answer, or I'll run you down!' and, 
as no reply was given, true to his word he did run 
down the island ; two trees standing widely apart having 
deceived him as to its character. Probably neither 
Noah's brig nor his raft sustained serious injury, but 




u 



GO 



< 

o 
< 



Or. 



2 



■ 5 S 

o -^ 

c; c 

^ a; 

ffi 



Disasters of River Travel 79 

the poor Swallow met a more cruel fate. A large por- 
tion of the island has been taken away, and the rock 
material was used in constructing the embankments 
of the canal through the middle ground." 

The place since the eventful wreck has always been 
called the Swallow Rocks. 

The author's father, Ira Buckman, purchased the 
old wreck of the Swallow, hauled the material seven 
miles inland and from it built a fine two-story house at 
Valatia, N. Y. It is on the old Albany Post Road, is 
yet standing in a good state of preservation and is still 
know^n as the '' Swallow House." 

The Victory sank in 1845. She had always belied 
her name and was a hoodoo from the first: she was 
built in 1828 and owned largely in Albany. Her en- 
gines were too powerful and she was always meeting 
with accidents. This same company built and put on 
their line the DeWitt Clinton which finally became a 
tow barge, but the enterprise was never a success and 
many Albanians lost all they put into the scheme. 

The Empire was run into by the schooner Noah 
Brown in Newburgh Bay, May 18, 1849, and twenty- 
four lives were lost. 

The loss of the Henry Clay on July 28, 1852, was one 
of the notable and fatal disasters of the river. She had 
almost reached New York on her way from Albany 
when she was discovered to be on fire. Her captain 
headed her for the shore at Riverdale and ran her hard 



80 Old Steamboat Days 

aground, but unfortunately most of the passengers 
were at the stern, which was in deep water and im- 
prisoned by the flames. There was a wild panic, the 
terror stricken men and women fighting for possession 
of the life preservers and struggling with one another 
even after landing in the water. Sixty lives were lost, 
including a number of well-known New Yorkers, 
among the number being Miss Hawthorne, a sister of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the calamity cast a gloom 
over the entire city. The shore of the river at the place 
of the accident was crowded for days with people seek- 
ing to recover the bodies of the dead. 

The Reindeer, one of the larger and popular boats, 
which bore Jenny Lind in triumph to Albany when 
making her successful trip through the country, met 
with disaster September 4, 1852. The boilers of the 
boat burst near Bristol, forty miles below Albany. 
Six persons were killed and twenty-five others died 
afterwards of their injuries. 

These two accidents, following so closely one after 
the other, resulted in a public agitation that secured 
the enactment of the Steamboat Inspection Bill of that 
year. Though the captain of the Clay and the owners 
insisted there had been no racing, the passengers 
claimed there had; — the coroner's jury found she had 
been racing all the way down the river with the Armenia 
and the disaster was without doubt the result of the 
woodwork catching fire from the overheated boilers. 



Disasters of River Travel 81 

The New World sank off the Stuyvesant shore on 
July 4, 1861, on her way from New York to Albany. 
It was in the morning and daylight and fortunately no 
lives were lost. She was raised and repaired at New 
York and was used during the Civil War, then in 
progress, as a hospital ship, being stationed in the 
vicinity of West Point. Her engines were placed in a 
new night boat for the People's Line, called the St, 
John. 

The Oregon was sunk in collision with the City of 
Boston, at New York, October 22, 1863, and in June, 
1864, the Berkshire burned near Hyde Park with loss 
of Ufe. 

The Isaac Newton, on her up-river trip on the night 
of December 5, 1863, exploded her starboard boiler 
opposite Fort Washington Point, after which she 
caught fire and was completely destroyed. Seventeen 
persons were scalded, nine of whom died. 

The Francis Skiddy, one of the four pipers with as 
many boilers, built for speed in 1851, came to grief on 
her down trip November 5, 1864. She hit a rock near 
Staatsburg while trying to avoid a large tow and 
proved to be so bad a wreck that she was never put 
again in service. Her engines were taken out and for 
the most part placed in the Dean Richmond, which was 
new in 1865, and they are still doing duty in that boat. 
Though the Skiddy never fulfilled the expectations of 
her owners as a speeder, she, for a long period, accom- 



82 Old Steamboat Days 

plished what none of the present boats are called upon 
to do: she made a round trip between Albany and 
New York every twenty-four hours. 

The St. John burst one of her boilers October 29, 
1865, a few miles below Albany, and fifteen lives were 
lost, most of them being passengers. She was repaired 
and ran for twenty years, one of the most popular boats 
on the river, finally being destroyed by fire while laid 
up in winter quarters at the foot of Canal street. New 
York, in February, 1885. 

The St. John rammed and sank the Catskill several 
years ago off West Sixty-fifth street. New York, and 
the Onteora not long since ran high and dry in a brick- 
yard above Newburgh, but was hauled off without 
much damage. 

One of the latest serious accidents to befall the river 
boats was on October 13, 1906, when the Troy Line 
boat Saratoga ran down the Adirondack near Tivoli. 

The Saratoga was so badly injured she dropped one 
of her boilers in the river and it has never been recov- 
ered. The Adirondack had much of her forward work 
carried away, but continued to run for the balance of 
the season. Each boat lost a man. The Saratoga 
ended her career on the river then and there. 

The City of Troy was discovered to be on fire after 
leaving Yonkers on the evening of April 5, 1907. She 
had aboard about one hundred passengers and a 
valuable cargo of freight. Captain Briider and his crew 



Disasters of River Travel 83 

made a desperate effort to subdue the fire which origi- 
nated in the galley in the hold, but without success, 
so he effected a landing at the Gould Dock at Ardsley. 
All the panic-stricken passengers were safely landed, 
but the entire cargo, including several horses, was lost, 
as the vessel, after setting fire to the dock, burned to 
the water's edge and was a total loss. She was built in 
1876, but several times reconstructed. She was two 
hundred and eighty feet long, thirty-eight feet beam, 
and her engines were 1,600 horse power. 



CHAPTER X 



FLOATING TOWNS 



AMONG the most picturesque sights on the Hud- 
son are its floating towns. No more fitting term 
can be used to designate the long Hues of canal boats 
lashed together four and five abreast and strung out 
for nearly a half mile, being towed down the river, so 
slowly that the movement is hardly discernible. 

The tows, which are made up at the basin above 
Albany where the Erie Canal enters the Hudson, look 
very much like floating towns, presenting the regu- 
larity of blocks of buildings, with lanes of open water 
between, not unlike streets in appearance. 

These clusters of ''canalers," hay barges and ice 
boats, though of a motley appearance, are always 
interesting. Home life in its every phase can be noted, 
for the "canaler's" boat is largely his world. His 
family is domiciled on the craft from the opening to 
the close of navigation, and the boat is often maintained 
as the home when in winter quarters. 

On one the captain's wife may be seen washing 



Floating Towns 85 

clothes just outside her cabin door and on another the 
entire wash hanging up to dry; red flannel shirts of 
the men flutter in the breeze, and on the same lines is 
the finest of snowy under-linen of both male and female 
variety. Little shirts and "petties" also indicate the 
presence of children, and if you watch for them you 
will find them on some of the boats, playing with children 
from the other craft in the tow or running over the 
decks with their dogs at such a rate, one wonders they 
do not fall overboard. Some of the cabin roofs are 
fitted up with gay canvas awnings, hammocks and 
swings. Bright hued geraniums and other flowers in 
boxes in front of the cabin windows add to the picture. 
Sometimes a group of men and women will be seen on 
one of the boats, spending a pleasant hour eating 
and listening to the lively music of a concertina 
or guitar, for it is while the boats are being slowly 
towed down or up the river, that the " canalers " have 
a rest and the opportunity to relieve the rather dull 
monotony of their hves, by these social amenities. 

Because these people of the canal boats five lives 
apart and different from others, do not imagine for a 
moment there is not to be found among them men and 
women who are quite the equal of the average men and 
women met with elsewhere. Especially was this the 
fact in the years that followed shortly after the opening 
of the Erie Canal. 

Many young men on the farms and in the mid- 



86 Old Steamboat Days 

state towns through the Mohawk Valley, married and 
single, saw in the new waterway opportunities to make 
a fortune and to travel to the great cities. They in- 
vested in canal boats and became both owners and 
captains. They carried grain and products of all 
kinds to New York and went back loaded with manu- 
factured goods for the up-state farmers. Some men ran 
passenger packets on the canal, and the Red Bird and 
other lines carried many between Albany and Buffalo. 

Many of the boats, those carrying wheat especially 
— ^for it was before the day of railroads with their huge 
grain elevators at the terminals — ^were kept particularly 
clean and were provided with roomy cabins in the 
stern, wonderfully contrived for convenience, in which 
the captain, his wife and sometimes the children lived 
comfortably. The mules that towed the boats on the 
canal were quartered in a stable built in the bow of the 
boat. 

The owners of this great inland marine, that sprang 
into existence on the opening of the Erie Canal, had 
as many different ideas as to the naming of their boats 
as come to the minds of parents naming their first born. 
Some were fancy, some just homely family names after 
the owner's wife or daughter; others were those of 
heroes and even mythological gods and goddesses 
were not forgotten. It is on this account if you ever 
get near enough to closely inspect these river tows, you 
are apt to find the Gladiator of Spencerport bound 



Floating Towns 87 

more firmly with two-inch hawsers to Elizabeth Jones 
of Fort Ann, than the marital ties of many couples 
bind them to-day. General George Washington is apt 
to be found keeping company with Polly , all the way 
down the river and if two late stragglers join the tow 
and are hitched on behind all the rest, it is Uke as not 
to prove to be Minerva and Jim enjoying, as it were, 
for a few hours, only too brief, a tete-a-tete by them- 
selves. 

This towing of canal boats on the Hudson con- 
stitutes a large and profitable business in its own class. 
It is in the hands of regularly organized companies 
and the rates are now so thoroughly established that 
"cut-throating" is a thing of the past. It was not al- 
ways so, for competition in the towing business was 
quite as fierce as it was in the freight and passenger 
business. The time was, when a canal boat owner 
could get a tow all the way from Albany to New York 
for five dollars, but the average fee when competition 
was not cutting all profit from the business was more 
Ukely to be fifteen. 

Some of the old-time companies engaged in the 
business was the Schuyler Towing Co. of Albany, the 
Austin Towing Co., the Ronan Co. and the Swift Sure 
Towing Co. of New York. Most of the canal boats 
rendezvoused in New York at the basin at Coenties 
Shp, on the East River, and it is at this point that the 
up-river tows are still made up. 



88 Old Steamboat Days 

The steamers that pulled these immense tows up and 
down the river were for the most part old passenger 
boats, rebuilt and adapted for the purpose by the 
removal of most of their upper works, saloons and 
staterooms. The Vanderbilt, Niagara, Norwich, Alida, 
Cayuga, Syracuse, Connecticut and many others have 
become tow boats, and if you have ever seen an old 
cattle boat, the John Stevens, knocking about the 
river, loaded with livestock for the abattoirs, you will 
have recognized in many of her lines those of the fine 
passenger boat she was in the fifties. 

It required nearly a week for one of these tows to 
make the trip down the river, the progress was so slow. 
Generally sixty to eighty boats made up a good sized 
tow, but Capt. Harvey Temple went up the river one 
time, with a broom on the fiagstaff of the old Con- 
necticut, and pulling one hundred and eight canal 
boats behind her, which made a new record in the 
size of towing fleets, knd so far as the author is in- 
formed, still is the largest. 

These flotillas of canal boats, not so large now as in 
the former days, are all witnesses of the great impor- 
tance of the vast system of inland waterways which 
helped to make undisputed New York's title to being 
the Empire State. It has nearly one thousand miles 
of canals within its borders, the construction and main- 
tenance of which has cost upward of a hundred milUon 
dollars. 



Floating Towns 89 

Of these the Erie Canal, three hundred and sixty-one 
miles in length, is by far the most important, connecting 
the Great Lakes with the tidewater of the Hudson. 
Next in importance is the Champlain Canal and Glens 
Falls Feeder which connects the Hudson with Lake 
Champlain. These and the other canals have in the 
past played a great part in the development of the 
State. The cities on the line of the Erie Canal — 
Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Little Falls, 
Syracuse and Rochester — owe much to the waterway 
that brought commerce to their doors and placed 
them in ready communication with the rest of the 
country. 

Call to mind if you can the many towns in the center 
of the State, far from the waters of the lakes, rivers or 
ocean, which have an aqueous termination or sug- 
gestiveness in their names and you will realize in a 
small degree the importance of what the great canal 
system meant to places that would have been to-day 
Kttle more than straggling hamlets on dusty country 
cross roads. With the ocean and the Great Lakes 
many miles distant you will find in inland New York, 
Lockport, Gasport, Middleport, Shelby Basin, Eagle 
Harbor, Brockport, Adams Basin, Spencerport, Fair- 
port, Waynesport, Port Gilson, Weedsport, Port Byron 
and other "ports," all witnesses to the developing 
power of the canal system of the State. 

The work of building the Erie Canal was begun 



90 Old Steamboat Days 

under an act of the Legislature, July 4, 1817, at Rome, 
in the presence of Gov. De Witt Clinton, through whose 
earnest endeavors, exerted at all times and in the face 
of much opposition, the great improvement was urged 
to a successful completion. The Governor's opponents 
always referred to the vast undertaking in those days 
as " Clinton's Big Ditch." The plans provided for a 
canal forty feet wide at the top, eighteen feet at the 
bottom, with a depth of at least four feet of water, 
which was calculated to accommodate boats of one 
hundred tons burden. The work had progressed so 
far that on October 22, 1819, the first boat was able 
to make the trip from Rome to Utica with Governor 
Clinton, Chancellor Livingston and other distinguished 
men aboard. 

It was not until October 26, 1825, however, after 
eight years of prodigious labor, that the Erie and 
Champlain Canals were opened and the Hudson was 
the scene of such a maritime pageant that the people 
of that period had never dreamed of. 

On the date named a flotilla of canal boats, all new 
and gaily decorated, started from Buffalo, on Lake 
Erie, for New York City. The news of the departure 
was communicated to the latter city by the booming of 
cannon located along the line and the signal thus 
traveled across the entire State and down the Hudson 
in one hour and twenty minutes. When the boats 
reached Albany they were received by a great throng 




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Floating Towns 91 

of people, Governor Clinton, the Canal Commissioners 
and all the State officials. There never was such a ring- 
ing of bells and booming of cannon in the place before. 
The people who had made the trip from Buffalo were 
escorted to the capitol in a triumphal procession and 
welcomed by Mayor Hone, of New^ York City, on be- 
half of the people of the metropolis. 

On November fifth, at five o'clock in the morning, 
the canal boat packets, convoyed by the Chancellor Liv- 
ingston, with Governor Clinton and distinguished guests 
on board the Young Lion of the West and the Seneca 
Chief, reached New York and were welcomed by the 
New York Common Council, which met the fleet on 
board the steamboat Washington. Every vessel in the 
harbor v/as gaily decorated with flags, the church bells 
rang and cannon saluted as the naval procession rounded 
the Battery and sailed up the East River as far as the 
Brooklyn Navy Yard. There other vessels joined the 
fleet, which turned and sailed to Sandy Hook where 
the schooner Dolphin had been anchored. 

Here took place the most unique feature of the 
celebration. As the boats circled round the schooner 
Governor Clinton poured a keg of the fresh water of 
Lake Erie into the salt water of the Atlantic and the 
marriage of the Great Lakes and the ocean was an- 
nounced as having been duly solemnized. As another 
token of what the great improvement meant to the 
civilized world Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell poured into 



92 Old Steamboat Days 

the ocean, waters collected by him from the Thames, 
Seine, Rhine, Danube, Amazon, La Plata, Orinoco, 
Ganges, Indus, Gambia, Nile, Mississippi and Colum- 
bia Rivers. 

On returning to the city the distinguished State 
officials were met at the Battery with a procession 
nearly four miles long, which marched through the 
principal streets. At night there was a great display of 
fireworks, the city was brilliantly illuminated and 
altogether it was the greatest celebration old New 
York had ever had up to that time. 

The Erie Canal having demonstrated its great use- 
fulness to the State was enlarged in 1854 to seventy 
feet at the surface, fifty-six at the bottom, with a depth 
of seven feet. 

At the present time a third enlargement and im- 
provement is being made by straightening the course 
so as to afford a larger capacity to float barges of one 
thousand tons burden. The people carried the propo- 
sition to spend one hundred and one million dollars on 
the last enlargement, by a large majority at a general 
election, though many of the best informed maintain 
the usefulness of canals is at an end and the more 
modern method of railroad transportation has ren- 
dered them obsolete. The people, however, have gen- 
erally favored maintaining the canals, as the most 
effectual check they could impose on railroad mo- 
nopolies. 



CHAPTER XI 

BARGE TRAVEL ON THE RIVER 

ANOTHER feature of river life in the early days 
of steam navigation was the barges that carried 
passengers up and down the Hudson. These generally 
hailed from some of the small towns on the upper river 
that could not supply traffic enough to support a 
steamboat service. 

At first the barge was, however, conceived to afford 
passengers the means of travel by steam without being 
subjected to the dangers of being upon a steamboat, 
with the attendant possibilities of bursting boilers and 
other fearful accidents from breaking machinery. The 
first to appear were the Lady Clinton and the Lady 
Van Rensselaer and they were called '"safety barges." 

The barges were boats with a main and upper deck 
almost as long and commodious as a steamer. The 
main deck was fitted up with a cabin, extending in 
some instances the whole length of the boat. There 
was a long saloon, with "state" or sleeping rooms 
arranged along on either side. Windows looked out on 



94 Old Steamboat Days 

the water and doorways opened in on the cabin. There 
was generally a long table in the saloon at which meals 
were served for fifty cents each to the passengers. The 
captain of the barge always sat at the head of the table 
and helped make the meal hour quite an event of the 
trip. These barges were towed by one of the regular 
passenger boats up to their home town, where they 
would be dropped. 

The '' safety barges " were quite popular in their day, 
for they carried many passengers who were enthusiastic 
over the pleasure derived from a trip on the water on 
boats of this character. 

Thomas L. McKenney, who was attached to the 
Department of the Interior at Washington and one of 
the Commissioners who with Lewis Cass negotiated 
the treaty with the Northwest Indians, made a barge 
journey up the Hudson in June, 1826, on his way to 
the Great Lakes. He has left us such a vivid descrip- 
tion of these barges and the delights of the trip, the 
reader will surely pardon a somewhat longer quotation 
than usual : 

" I left New York, as it was my intention to do, in the 
Lady Clinton, yesterday morning, at nine o'clock. It 
was the first time I had ever seen one of these barges. 
I must say I was struck with the admirable invention, 
and with the extent and variety and perfection of the 
accommodations. You have seen steamboats. This 
barge, in all respects except breadth of beam and 



Barge Travel on the River 95 

machinery, resembles the finest you ever did see. It 
took me the first half hour after getting on board to 
walk through this floating palace. It certainly ex- 
ceeds anything I have ever yet seen in all that enters 
into the composition of safety and comfort. Indeed 
there is a splendor too in the ornamental parts which 
is very striking and as if the inventive genius of the 
owners was apprehensive that the ear might grow 
jealous of the eye that organ had been provided for 
also, with a fine band of music. I have heard some 
question the security of this barge, by saying her buoy- 
ancy and great elevation above the surface of the water 
rendered her liable to turn over. But I doubt whether 
if she or her sister, the Lady Van Rensselaer, were to 
glide up and down the North River for a century such 
an occurrence would happen. Were they visitants of 
the sea the swells of the ocean might rock them over, 
but never in my opinion will the North River roll so 
as to occasion such a disaster. 

" This beautiful barge is towed by the Commerce, an 
unusually fine steamboat, and of great power. The 
connection is by means of two pieces of timber some 
six feet long. They are fastened to either side of the 
bow of the barge, and uniting in the form of a pair of 
compasses, the upper or joint part receives a bolt of 
iron which rises out of the stern of the Commerce. 
The connection parts work on swivels, hence none of 
the motion of the steamboat is communicated to the 



96 Old Steamboat Days 

barge. Communication is had between the two by 
means of a movable platform some two and a half feet 
wide, with hand rails on either side. Openings are 
made in the stern of the Commerce and in the bow of 
the barge in which the platform rests. . . . 

"Some of the advantages which the barge possesses 
over the steamboat are, in the security from the effects 
of a bursted boiler — freedom from the heat and steam 
and from the smell of grease and the kitchen, and from 
the jar occasioned by the machinery and the enlarged 
accommodations — the whole being set apart for eating 
and sleeping and walking. The cabin in which we 
dined is below and is the same in which the gentlemen 
sleep; and one hundred and eighty persons can sit 
down at once and each have elbow room sufficient for 
all the purposes of figuring with the knife and fork in 
all the graces of which these two instruments are sus- 
ceptible. At the termination of this immense dining 
apartment and towards the bow is a bar, most sump- 
tuously supplied with all that can be desired by the 
most fastidious and thirsty. The berths occupy the 
entire sides of this vast room; they are curtained in 
such way as to afford retirement in dressing and un- 
dressing; there being brass rods on which curtains are 
projected and these are thrown out at night. In the 
day the curtains hang close to the berths as is usual. 
Next above this are the ladies' cabin and apartments — 
staterooms rather — furnished in the most splendid style. 



Barge Travel on the River 97 

and in which a lady has all the retirement and comfort 
which the delicacy and tenderness of her sex requires. 

" Over the bar and upon this middle apartment or tier 
is an apartment where the gentlemen dress, shave and 
read. All around this second story, it being, I should 
judge, not over two-thirds the width of the boat, and 
resting on the middle deck, is a fine walk with settees 
where you can sit when you please and lounge. Then 
comes, and over all, the grand promenade, with an 
awning when the sun or rain requires it over the whole. 

'"It is not possible for New York to furnish in her 
best hotels a better dinner than we sat down to yes- 
terday; nor in a better style of preparation. I suppose 
our company numbered one hundred. The captain is 
highly qualified, no less by his masterly knowledge of 
his duty than by his gentlemanly courtesy, for so 
splendid a charge; and the attendants appeared to be 
the best. Taken altogether I question whether the 
world ever witnessed anything so perfect in all that 
relates to the accommodation and comfort and pleasure 
of passengers." 

Evidently Mr. McKenney enjoyed his barge trip up 
the Hudson, and it is quite likely that he traveled on a 
pass. 

Some of the passenger barges that plied for years on 
the river were the Newburgh, Susquehanna and Charles 
Spear, Their towing steamer was the Highlander 
owned by the Powell family, which gave the Hudson 



98 Old Steamboat Days 

two well-known steamers, the Thomas and Mary 
Powell. The first named, however, never equaled the 
latter in point of speed. The firm of T. & J. Powell 
of Newburgh ran a line of sloops on the river as early 
at 1802; and it was from that beginning the present 
daily evening steamboat service to that city came 
eventually into existence, the owners of the Homer 
Ramsdell Line (now included in the Central Hudson 
Co.) being grandsons of Thomas Powell. 

It is believed the propeller type of river boat was 
especially built to make it more feasible to tow 
these barges, as the side wheel boats made it very 
noisy, the revolving paddles splashing the water at the 
side of the barges all night long. With the propeller 
wheel at the stern this difficulty, as well as much of the 
motion, was overcome. 

Traveling by barge was not always the height of en- 
joyment and comfort described by the enthusiastic 
traveler just quoted. Progress was slow and the boats 
latterly carried a varied cargo of farm products, baled 
hay and live stock. Calves and lambs bound for the 
city slaughter houses, and horses for the New York 
street car lines — the Third Avenue line had three thou- 
sand horses in its stables alone — frequently made such a 
chorus of " bahing," bleating and neighing that rendered 
futile any attempt to sleep in the "stateroom" in the 
'' grand saloon " on the upper deck. 

Most, if not all the passenger barges have been taken 



Barge Travel on the River 99 

from the river, and after being altered, first, to make 
excursion boats for Sunday school and social club 
picnics around the cities, finally became hay boats to 
carry that staple product of the Hudson Valley farmers 
to the New York market. Doubtless there are grand- 
fathers and grandmothers who may read this, who will 
be able to call to mind rare midsummer holidays 
spent aboard the "elegant and commodious barges" 
William Myers, Walter Sands or the Caledonia, in 
dancing and merry-making, as they were slowly towed 
to some popular picnic ground near the great city. 

Possibly the best conception of what the old passen- 
ger barges were like may be found in the floating 
hospital of St. John's Guild, the Helen C, Juilliard, 
which in the summer months can be seen almost daily 
being towed up the river or down the bay crowded 
with mothers and babies from the East Side tenements 
and affording them rare opportunities to be in the 
sunshine and breathe the fresh air. The boat is pro- 
vided with every accommodation in the way of cabin 
accessories, having been built especially for the pur- 
pose. The floating hospital is considered one of the 
most beneficent charities of the great city. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE STEAMBOATS OF TO-DAY 

THERE is none of the old time competition for the 
passenger traffic on the river to-day. It has been 
adjusted between the several lines. Indeed some kind 
of a traffic arrangement is made between the boats and 
railroads. The character of the boats and the accom- 
modations have been improved and most all the craft 
now operating in the passenger service are new, pre- 
senting every luxury possible to secure in boat travel. 

The principal steamboat companies operating on the 
river at present are the People's Line night boats to 
Albany, the Day Line to Albany, the Citizens' Line to 
Troy, the Catskill Night Line, the Hudson Night Line, 
the Newburgh Night Line and the Central Hudson 
Company's Lines to several of the cities on the river 
south of Albany. 

Passengers on the boats travel in comfort and safety, 
for the days of steamboat racing are past and the 
cheap rate competition, which overcrowded the boats, 
exists no longer. To-day the journey up and down the 



The Steamboats of To-day 101 

river is made on modern boats, the passengers enter- 
tained with deUghtful music from stringed orchestras 
and at night with searchhght exhibitions. These are 
indeed beautiful, the cultivated hillsides, handsome 
villas of the wealthy and rugged grandeur of the rocky 
Highlands being brought out in a series of wonderful 
pictures as the boats, twinkling with a thousand electric 
lights of their own, move slowly along the river. It is 
not only the passengers that enjoy these nightly illumi- 
nations of unusual beauty. The dwellers on the river 
banks know just when to expect them and almost set 
their clocks, say their prayers and go to bed after the 
night boat has passed. 

Some of the newer boats now in service on the river 
are the Homer Ramsdell, the Newburgh, the Onteora, 
the Albany, New York and Hendrick Hudson, of the 
Day Line, the Adirondack and C W, Morse, of the 
Night Line to Albany. 

Of these the Hudson and Morse are the newest and 
are of a type so distinctly in advance of the others, an 
extended note of them will be of interest. 

The Hendrick Hudson is the second steamer of that 
name that has plied the river. They were probably 
named Hendrick instead of Henry because of some 
confusion arising from the English discoverer of the 
river having come to this country in a Dutch vessel and 
under the Dutch flag. From whatever cause it arises, 
it is the fact that half of the time Hudson is referred 



102 Old Steamboat Days 

to as Hendrick and it no doubt is a more picturesque 
rendering of the name. 

The Hendrick Hudson was built on the banks of the 
Hudson at Newburgh and launched March 31, 1906. 
She is three hundred and ninety feet long, forty-three 
feet beam and eighty-two feet over the guards. She 
draws but eight feet of water. Her hull is of steel divided 
into seven water-tight compartments, with two collision 
bulkheads. She has five decks, three of which are for 
the exclusive use of passengers, of which she can carry 
five thousand, no space being reserved for freight. 
The engine is of the three cylinder compound variety 
of five thousand five hundred horse power with a seven 
foot stroke. The paddle wheels are twenty-four feet 
in diameter, of the feathering type, on a shaft twenty- 
two inches in diameter, of open hearth carbon steel. 
One of the new features of this boat is the fact that the 
crank shaft is below the main deck line, made possible 
by the small diameter of the paddle wheels, but adding 
greatly to the comfort and convenience of the passen- 
gers. No sacrifice of speed has been made by this im- 
provement as the Hudson can make twenty-three miles 
an hour easily. 

The boat is magnificently furnished in hard woods 
and handsomely decorated. The dining room on the 
main deck aft and surrounded with large plate glass 
windows, is finished in mahogany, as are the saloons 
on the upper decks. 




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The Steamboats of To-day 103 

A grand staircase leads to a large observation room 
on the upper deck, over which is a handsome stained 
glass dome. In the forward saloon is a suspended 
band stand and so situated that it is estimated the 
concerts given by the orchestra, which are a great 
feature on the boats of this line, can be heard by at 
least three thousand seated passengers. There are a 
number of private drawing rooms furnished in Louis 
XVI, Japanese, French-Empire, Dutch and Colonial 
styles and a large writing room in polished teakwood. 
Everywhere throughout the boat are large plate glass 
windows, affording passengers an opportunity to view 
the beautiful scenery of the river. She is steered by 
steam, has her own electric light equipment and in 
short an attempt has been made to supply every com- 
fort and convenience that the most exacting passengers 
could desire. 

A new Day Line boat, companion to the Hudson^ is 
about to be laid down on the ways in Marvel's Yards, 
at Newburgh, and is to be finished in time for the sum- 
mer traffic in 1909. She will be named the Robert Ful- 
ton. The boat will be 415 feet long, 85 feet beam, 62 
feet from her keel to the top of the pilot house. The 
engines will be 6,500 horse power and the boat will be 
licensed to carry 6,000 passengers. 

The C. JV. Morse is one of the longest side wheel 
steamers afloat. She is four hundred and twenty-seven 
feet over all, fifty feet six inches beam, but ninety feet 



104 Old Steamboat Days 

over guards. The load draft is but nine feet. The hull 
is of steel, divided in eight water-tight compartments 
with collision bulkheads. She has four steel masts. 
On the lower deck are accommodations for fireman 
and deckhands and a saloon with berths for passengers, 
besides room for the boilers and dynamos for supplying 
two thousand five hundred electric lights all through the 
boat and the thirty-six inch search light on the pilot 
house. The kitchens, barrooms and pantries are also 
on this deck. 

The main deck forward is reserved for freight, but 
aft, the entire room is a handsomely fitted up lobby 
and magnificently appointed dining room, in richly 
carved mahogany woodwork and lighted with two 
hundred and twenty-five electric lights, held in green 
bronze fixtures. This room will seat three hundred 
comfortably. The main staircase leads from the lobby 
to the grand saloon, which is twenty-eight feet high 
with a domed ceiling in white and gold and sur- 
rounded with two galleries having highly ornamented 
guard rails of mahogany and bronze. Staterooms with 
brass bedsteads and parlors de luxe with bath rooms 
and toilets can be entered from the saloon direct or 
communicating corridors, richly carpeted. There is 
also a passenger elevator on the boat. In all there are 
four hundred and fifty of these sleeping apartments 
furnished in varying degrees of elegance. She is li- 
censed to carry two thousand passengers. 



The Steamboats of To-day 105 

The boat is four stories, or decks, high and the floor 
of the pilot house is forty feet above water level. She 
is steered by steam and every movement of the vessel 
can be directed from the pilot house. The engines, 
which are of the vertical type, are four thousand five 
hundred horse power, cylinder eighty-one inches in 
diameter, twelve foot stroke, and the boilers are four 
in number and are thirty-three feet long, nine feet 
six inches in diameter and there are two smokestacks. 
The paddle wheels are of the feathering type variety, 
thirty feet in diameter, and the paddle wheel shaft is 
twenty-four inches in diameter. It was a clever piece 
of marine engineering to produce so huge a steamer, 
when the draught of the boat was restricted to nine feet 
loaded on account of the shallow water near Albany, 
but the designer appears to have wrestled most suc- 
cessfully with the difficult problem with which he had 
to contend. 

Another type of modern steamboat, differing entirely 
from those described, is the Ashury Park. She is of 
the propeller type. Though not designed especially 
for the Hudson, she leaves daily from the North River 
side of the city of New York for Sandy Hook and is 
frequently seen by the travelers on the river. The 
Sandy Hook route is operated by the Central Railroad 
of New Jersey and is for the special benefit of the 
patrons of the shore resorts on the Jersey coast. All 
of the boats of this line, the Monmouth and Sandy Hook, 



106 Old Steamboat Days 

are propellers and very speedy. The latest addition to 
the fleet, the Asbury Park, built by the Cramps and 
put on in 1903, is the fastest on the Kne. She is three 
hundred and seven feet long, forty-two feet beam and 
fifty-one feet over her guards. The hull is steel with six 
water-tight compartments, and forward and aft there 
are colHsion bulkheads. She draws but eleven feet of 
water on account of the shoals inside the Hook. Her 
appointments for the accommodation of passengers — 
she is licensed to carry two thousand one hundred and 
fifty-nine — are of the most complete character. Her 
grand saloon, one hundred and ninety-five feet long, 
is finished in quartered oak, and large plate plass win- 
dows afford the traveler most delightful views of the 
shipping in river and bay. There are nineteen state- 
rooms and four drawing rooms are also provided. 
She has two engines of the four cylinder, triple type, 
of six thousand horse power and the boat has developed 
a speed of twenty and five one-hundredths knots. This 
means she can make the run to the Atlantic Highlands 
at Sandy Hook, a distance of eighteen miles, in one 
hour and five minutes with the regularity of a railroad 
time-table. Indeed she runs in close connection with 
railroad trains that carry the passengers from the land- 
ing point to Sea Girt, Long Branch, Ocean Grove and 
other popular resorts. 

Two new boats, one for the People's Line and 
the other for the Citizen's Line to be built on the 




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The Steamboats of To-day 107 

general lines of the Morse, have been contracted for, 
both of which will be ready for the summer season 
of 1908. They will have steel hulls, and the larger 
one of the two, will be four hundred and forty feet long 
ha\dng over five hundred staterooms and accommoda- 
tions for two thousand passengers. Every convenience 
will be provided and they are expected to be the most 
luxurious river craft afloat. 

The name of the new People's Line boat will be the 
Princeton and the Citizen's Line new boat will be 
named the Knickerbocker repeating the name of a pop- 
ular steamer in the passenger service on the river in 
1844-5. 



CHAPTER XIII 

HUDSON-FULTON MEMORIALS 

THE names of Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton 
will be borne in large letters on the pages of his- 
tory, so long as the river that was the scene of their 
great achievements finds its way to the sea. The Ter- 
centennial of Hudson's discovery and the Centennial 
of Fulton's successful application of steam to naviga- 
tion will furnish opportunities, however, for New York 
to erect such memorials as will suitably honor the 
memories of the two men. It is indeed strange that 
neither has heretofore been honored in any way, unless 
an exception is noted on account of the panel in the 
Astor bronze doors in Trinity Church, which represents 
Hudson on the deck of the Half Moon off Manhattan 
Island, and the tablet on Fulton's grave. 

Two important committees are at work on the prop- 
osition and they include in their membership, some of 
the best known men in the country. 

The scheme to suitably celebrate the Tercentennial 
of Hudson's discovery took its first tangible shape on 



Hudson-Fulton Memorials 109 

February 15, 1905, when Mr. Robert Roosevelt, uncle 
of President Roosevelt, invited a number of gentlemen 
to meet with him and the subject was discussed. The 
attendants at that conference represented most of the 
patriotic and historical societies of the city of New 
York. It was determined to secure the creation of a 
commission under act of the Legislature to carry out 
the object of the conference. This was done and 
December 5, 1905, the Hudson Tercentenary Joint 
Committee was duly organized at the New York City 
Hall. 

The New York Board of Trade and Transportation, 
and others, acting quite independently, having deter- 
mined that some celebration should mark the Cen- 
tenary of Steam Navigation, on July 13, 1905, or- 
ganized the Robert Fulton Memorial Association with 
Gen. Fred D. Grant as president, who has since been 
succeeded by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a great- 
grandson of the '^ Commodore " who broke the river 
monopoly. 

It did not take long after these two separate move- 
ments had been inaugurated, for those at the head of 
each to appreciate the fact there was such a general 
tendency of scope and purpose as to suggest a con- 
solidation of endeavor, though the actual anniversaries 
fall in 1907 and 1909 respectively. A special legislative 
act. Chapter S25 of the Laws of 1906, was passed with 
a view of co-ordinating the two propositions; General 



110 Old Steamboat Days 

Stewart L. Woodford, ex-United States Minister to 
Spain, has been elected president of the joint commis- 
sion and the success of the celebration is assured. 

It is the purpose of the combined associations to 
cause suitable memorials to be erected to Hudson 
and Fulton, to be followed with a joint celebration on 
the waters of the Hudson that will bring together, 
possibly, the greatest number and finest types of steam 
craft ever assembled. The entire week beginning Sep- 
tember 20th, 1909, will be given over to land and water 
parades and commemorative exercises in the schools 
and by the Historical Societies. 

The Hudson Memorial Committee has already ad- 
vanced its plans in a large measure toward completion. 
These provide for an imposing Hudson Memorial 
Bridge to span Spuyten Duyvil Creek, connecting the 
Boulevard system of Manhattan Island with the park- 
ways of Westchester County. There has already been 
appropriated $1,000,000 by the City of New York 
to make a beginning, and the total cost of the 
contemplated improvement is likely to approximate 
$5,000,000. 

The Memorial Bridge, as planned, is to span the 
Spuyten Duyvil Creek at a height of one hundred and 
seventy feet. The central steel span of the bridge will 
be eight hundred and twenty-five feet in length, the 
largest in the world with a single exception, that being 
the steel arch bridge over the gorge at Niagara, which 



Hudson-Fulton Memorials 111 

is fifteen feet longer. From abutment to abutment the 
length of the bridge will be two thousand five hundred 
feet. The stone viaduct approaches are to be carried 
on a series of masonry arches. The structure will be 
one hundred. feet wide, affording two sidewalks, each 
eighteen feet wide, and a central roadway of sixty feet. 
No attempt will be made at elaborate decoration on 
the structure itself. Its grace of outline and massive- 
ness are relied upon to produce an appreciation of its 
solidity and impressiveness, but parklike effects at the 
approaches will be introduced and a knoll some thirty- 
five feet in height at the southern end will be retained 
and it is expected to crown this with some suitable 
monument to Hudson. The city is not expected, in 
the plans of the commission, to defray the cost of this 
memorial as it is believed that a popular subscription 
will produce sufficient funds to insure its erection by 
the time the bridge has been constructed and opened 
for the use of the public. 

The views that will be obtained from the bridge when 
completed will be among the finest that can be secured 
anywhere near the great city. Immediately below will 
be the Harlem River and the ship canal to the east. To 
the west will lie the Hudson, showing a stretch of water 
several miles in length, teeming with river craft, and 
beyond, the Palisades on the New Jersey shore. To 
the north the eye will take in the heights above River- 
dale and the wooded hills of Van Cortlandt Park, and 



112 Old Steamboat Days 

to the south, extended views of what is rapidly becom- 
ing the greatest city of the world. The panorama that 
will spread in every direction before the visitors to the 
Memorial Bridge, will present pictures that will linger 
long in the memory of those who shall live to see the 
work successfully completed. 

The Fulton Monument Association is planning to 
erect a Monumental Water Gate on the Hudson River 
shore front at West 114th and 116th streets and River- 
side Drive, harmonizing and adding to the dignity and 
beauty of the tomb of General Grant and the buildings 
of Columbia University that crown the hillside at that 
point. Several well-known architects are now at work 
on the plan for this Monumental Water Gate, but the 
design that will be finally selected has not as yet been 
determined. Every endeavor will be made, however, to 
decide upon the plan in time to put the corner stone of 
the monument in place on November 14, 1907, with ap- 
propriate ceremonies. The date named is the birthday 
of Robert Fulton and the year marks the first century of 
the successful application of steam to navigation. It is 
the purpose in building the Water Gate not only to 
honor the genius of Fulton, but at the same time to 
provide a suitable landing place for distinguished 
visitors who reach the city in ships. Nothing of the 
kind has yet been provided. The beautiful park at 
the Battery might well have been reserved for such 
purposes instead of having been given over to elevated 





; 



Robert Fulton 

From a photograph of the statue on the 

Fulton Ferry House in Brooklyn 



Hudson-Fulton Memorials 113 

railroad structures, landing places for emigrants, ferry 
slips and docks for excursion steamers. 

A third proposition taking tangible shape and form 
is the establishment of a Hudson-Fulton Memorial 
Park at Verplancks Point, forty miles up the river 
and directly opposite historic Stony Point, which has 
already been secured for a Memorial Park. It is pro- 
posed to locate on Verplancks Point some form of 
museum and exhibition that will foster a Hvely appre- 
ciation of all the points of interest that are associated 
with the history and achievements on the river. The 
State of New York has already been asked to pass a 
law appropriating $125,000 for this purpose. 

The proposed park is to include many historical 
points and will do much to preserve the scenic beauties 
of the river. The site of Fort Fayette and the remains 
of a shore battery that did service in the Revolution, 
the old King's ferry landing leading to the Stony Point 
battlefield on the opposite shore, the site of Washing- 
ton's headquarters and the camp ground of the allied 
American and French troops, under Washington and 
Rochambeau, in 1782, are all included in the area 
which it is sought to acquire. Hudson anchored the 
Half Moon on his trip up the river in 1609 off the 
shore of Verplancks Point; so there will be added in- 
terest to the Memorial Park on that account. 



CHAPTER XIV 



HENRY HUDSON S RIVER 



WHEN Henry Hudson, an Englishman com- 
manding a Dutch vessel and crew, sailed up 
the Hudson, he thought he was going to China. Like 
Columbus and all the early navigators to the New 
World, he was in quest of the same fabled Northwest 
Passage. This was to make a short cut to India and 
the Orient and had been sought for years, but which 
will never be realized until Uncle Sam finishes the 
Panama Canal. 

Hudson had made two previous trips under English 
auspices and failed. The third attempt was made 
under the Dutch flag and in a vessel, a very small one, 
almost a yacht, called the Half Moon, 

The beautiful Bay of New York was first entered 
by Hudson, who rounded Sandy Hook August 3, 1609, 
and kept on his course to the north past what is now 
Manhattan Island and up what is now the Hudson 
River. 

Here surely was a great stream of water, deep enough 



Henry Hudson's River 115 

to indicate a strait, with the walls of the Palisades sug- 
gesting the gigantic erosions of the glacial age, wit- 
nesses of the mighty forces of ice and water that swept 
down from the northward and made the Hudson Val- 
ley what it is. 

Is there any wonder Hudson and his crew rejoiced 
as they sailed northward, satisfied that the mariner's 
goal for hundreds of years, the Northwest Passage, had 
at last been found ? Every mile of the way seemed to 
add to the certainty. The broad expanse of water 
three and a half miles wide at Tarrytown, now the 
Tappan Zee (Sea), the still wider Haverstraw Bay all 
hastened the mariner and his men to the open ocean 
they believed must lie ahead. Then came the High- 
lands, the Dunderberg and Anthony's Nose, clothed 
with their primeval forests, looking like veritable head- 
land capes guarding the secrets of the undiscovered 
country and waters beyond. What a journey of mys- 
terious enchantment and of unexpected developments 
this first trip of the Half Moon up the Hudson must 
have afforded ! 

It was not until Hudson began to detect the shoaling 
water near the site of the present city of Hudson, his 
dreams of the Northwest Passage began to fade and 
the fact he was rapidly approaching the head of a great 
river dawned upon him. He pushed on, however, to 
just below where Albany, the capital of the State, now 
stands on the western bank and from that point sent 



116 Old Steamboat Days 

small boats still further up the river to ascertain if 
there was any way out. They returned with the dis- 
appointing statement that the stream became rapidly 
shallow and that they would have to return to the sea, 
one hundred and fifty miles away at the mouth of the 
river they had been exploring for so many days. 

Some of Hudson's men evidently left the river in 
their small boat expedition and went up the Mohawk, 
for to-day there is a hamlet midway on the peninsula 
made by the two rivers, called Half Moon, which, tra- 
dition says, is so called because some of the first ex- 
plorers from the little Dutch vessel visited the place 
when endeavoring to ascertain the limitations of Henry 
Hudson's great discovery. 

The commander of the Half Moon spent several 
days in visiting the friendly Indians living on the 
shores. After retracing his voyage and having an un- 
fortunate fight with some Indians, he again stood out 
to sea on October 4th, and never returned to the 
beautiful river he had discovered, which was to be 
known by his name for all time and preserve for him a 
place in American history. 

Hudson kept a journal of the many points he had 
noticed about his discovery. He called it the Great 
River and also the River of the Mountains. Some of 
his old crew returned the following year and soon the 
Dutch began to settle on Manhattan Island. They 
called it the River Mauritus, after Prince Maurice of 



Henry Hudson's River 117 

Nassau. It was also named the North River to dis- 
tinguish it from the South or Delaware River, but it 
came to be called, and will always be known as the 
Hudson, after the man who located it on the map of 
the New World. 

An unkind fate appears to have followed Hudson to 
the close of his life. His crew mutinied on the return 
voyage and when he reached Dartmouth, England, in 
November, the Government detained both him and his 
ship on the pretext that an Englishman had no right 
to be in the employ of foreign nations, making dis- 
coveries that would not redound to the credit of Eng- 
land. She paid but little attention, however, to the 
Dutchman's colony at New Amsterdam until years 
afterward, when the importance of the river and the 
settlement on Manhattan Island had become mani- 
fest. Hudson was not permitted to return to Holland 
and the crew of the Halj Moon was not allowed to 
carry the news of the discovery to those who had sent 
her on her voyage, until the following July. 

The spring of 1610 witnessed Hudson's departure 
from England on his last voyage, in the Discoverie, 
and this time in the employ of the Muscovy Company. 
He was still seeking the Northwest Passage when he 
entered the great sheet of water surrounded by deso- 
late shores, which still bears the name of its discoverer, 
Hudson's Bay. But the crew mutinied and Hudson, 
his son and seven men were put into a small boat and 



118 Old Steamboat Days 

told to shift for themselves. Undoubtedly the great 
navigator and his companions met an unmerited fate 
on the stormy waters of the bay, for they were never 
heard of again. 

The people in every land love their rivers. In some 
countries they are sacred. In others they bring fertility 
and wealth to the lovely valleys through which they 
flow. Their praises are sung in the poetry of the peo- 
ple and told of in story. When, as is often the case, 
they form the boundaries between foreign States, na- 
tions have plunged into war in order that the free 
passage of these great natural waterways might be 
maintained. 

To none has been given a more beautiful and useful 
stream than that which sweeps its majestic course 
from the forests of the Adirondacks, past the cities that 
line its shores, through the rocky Highlands and by 
the parapetted Palisades, until it mingles its waters 
with those of the bay in front of the great metropolis, 
the very gateway through which by far the largest in- 
flux of the wealth of the nation, namely, its people, 
have reached the New World. 

A river three hundred and twenty miles in length, 
one-half of which is open to unobstructed navigation 
by sail and steam for the larger boats, is a great 
asset in the building of a state. The Hudson has 
had much to do with making New York the Empire 







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Henry Hudson's River 119 

State and the city at its outlet the metropoHs of the 
country. 

From the first the Hudson played a most important 
part in the colonization of America. When the young 
colonies had grown strong and asserted their freedom 
and the War of Independence was on, with what 
soKcitous care did Washington and his generals fight 
to maintain the Hudson Valley. They were fully alive 
to the supreme necessity of keeping Burgoyne's forces 
in the north from making any coalition with those in 
the south, under Howe and Clinton. 

The British commanders also realized the advantage 
of the control of the Hudson and planned to secure it. 
Every vantage point along the Hudson was fortified 
by the Americans. Fort Washington on Manhattan 
Island and Fort Lee opposite. Stony Point and its 
fortifications, Fort Montgomery and the redoubts at 
various places along the shore, make the river one of 
rare historical interest. It was on the Hudson the 
patriots built their fire rafts, to float down on the British 
ships and it was at West Point the great chain was 
stretched across the stream, to obstruct any passage of 
the river the enemy might attempt to make. 

The surrender of Burgo}Tie at Saratoga after defeats 
in two battles at Bemis Heights in 1777 and the re- 
capture of Stony and Verplancks Points in 1779, from 
the British, only made the enemy more determined 
than ever to control the river and led up to that base 



120 Old Steamboat Days 

attempt of Clinton to secure through Benedict Arnold's 
perfidy, what he had failed to accomplish by the fair 
means of assault, the occupation of West Point and the 
key to the whole situation. 

What an absorbing chapter of American history this 
treason of Arnold and the sacrifice of Andre makes 
and how the recollection of it all comes to one, as he 
wends his way through the beautiful Highlands and 
views the handsome buildings that now crown the bluff, 
in which the future defenders of the nation are being 
educated in the arts of war. 

Indian legends, Dutch Sprookje, the romance of real 
life and the tales of fiction hover over nearly every mile 
of the river's course from its source in the mountains 
to its outlet in the great ocean. 

Indian Head, a noble pinnacle of rock in the Palisades, 
was a veritable watch tower for the red men, from which 
they detected the approach of their foes. But, alas! 
the ravages of the stone contractors with their crushers 
have ruined its former rugged beauty. 

The broad expanse of the Tappan Zee brings to mind 
the story of the hapless Rambout and his phantom 
ship, the Flying Dutchman. ''Sunny Side," the home 
of Washington Irving, on the eastern shore at Irving- 
ton, is suggestive of the headless Horseman of Sleepy 
Hollow, which is just above Tarrytown, and where 
Irving lies buried beside a quaint old church, the bricks 



Henry Hudson's River 121 

in which were imported from Holland two centuries ago 
by the pious Dutchmen. 

Bold Hook Mountain, another point of attack by 
the voracious stone contractor, whose picturesque 
beauty some public-spirited citizens are seeking to 
preserve from further spoliation, marks the northern 
limitation of the Tappan Zee. This headland was the 
Verdrietig (tedious) Hceck of the first Dutch navi- 
gators and so called because it remained so long in 
sight and took so many tacks to round on their trips 
up the river. 

Once around the Hook, traverse " Haverstroo " Bay, 
passing the scene of Mad Anthony Waynes' attack at 
Stony Point, you are soon well in the midst of the most 
beautiful scenery. Dunderberg and Anthony's Nose, 
a mile or two beyond, form the portals to this enchant- 
ing section of the river whose culminating beauty is at 
West Point from which Crow's Nest, Storm King, 
Cloud Rest and Breakneck Ridge are all in the superb 
panorama. 

Further north the "Highlands" recede from the 
river. To the east are the Berkshires, to the west are 
the Catskills and the haunts of Rip Van Winkle. 

These are the river stretches and those above, that 
have brought from the pens of Washington Irving, Fitz 
Green Halleck, Charles F. Hoffman, N. P. WiUis, Joseph 
Rodman Drake and Fenimore Cooper, some of their 
choicest contributions to English Uterature and induced 



122 Old Steamboat Days 

Charles M. Skinner to furnish in his ** Myths and 
Legends" those charming tales of "The Hudson and 
its Hills." 

If you travel to the north you will find, as you have 
on the shores of the lower river, prosperous cities, 
many of them picturesquely situated on the steep 
banks, some in amphitheaters of natural beauty in 
which river and mountain combine, to make the outlook 
one of abiding grandeur. 

Distinctly pastoral views are afforded on the upper 
reaches of the river, except when great unattractive 
whitewashed ice houses are perched on the river banks, 
suggesting the outreaching grasp of the monopolistic 
ice barons. 

The dam across the river just above Troy marks the 
limitation of steam navigation by the big boats. Some 
of the most beautiful stretches on the river are to be 
found above, as the stream winds its way down the fer- 
tile valleys of Saratoga, Washington, Warren and Essex 
Counties. Glens Falls has a picturesque beauty of its 
own and one remembers " The Last of the Mohicans," 
while Baker's Falls just below is not to be overlooked 
on account of its scenic attractiveness. Commercialism 
is, however, painfully manifest at both places on ac- 
count of the presence of the factories that utilize the 
water power. 

Trace the river to its source in the mountain lakes of 



Henry Hudson's River 123 

the Adirondacks, if you would find it in its crystal purity, 
far from the haunts of men and free from the pollutions 
of the towns that it has helped to make great. As you 
contemplate the little wellspring of this mighty and 
glorious river in its forest fastnesses, rejoice that it has 
its rise and runs its entire course through a State, whose 
people are proud of the fact, that the Hudson in point 
of beauty, of historical association, of storied interest 
and of usefulness to mankind, has no equal in the 
whole round world. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX I 

THE CLERMONT'S FIRST REGISTRY* 

No. 108. 

Enrollment in conformity to an Act of the Congress of the 
United States of America entitled "An Act for enrolling and 
licensing ships or vessels to be employed in the coasting trade 
and fisheries, and for regulating the same." 

Robert R. Livingston, of Clermont, 
Columbia County, State of New York, . 

having taken and subscribed to the oath required by the said 
Act and having sworn that he, together with Robert Fulton, 
of the City of New York, are citizens of the United States, 
and sole owners of the ship or vessel called the North River 
Steamboat of Clermont, whereof Samuel Wiswall is at present 
master, and as he hath sworn he is a citizen of the United 
States, and that the said ship or vessel was built in the City 
of New York, in the year 1807, as per enrollment 173 issued 
at this port on the 3d. And Peter A. Schenck, Surveyor of 
the Port, having certified that day of September, 1807, now 
given up, the vessel being enlarged, the said ship or vessel 
has one deck and two masts, and that her length is 149 ft.; 
breadth, 17 ft. 11 in.; depth, 7 ft., and that she measures 
182 48-95 tons. That she is a square-sterned boat, has 
square tuck; no quarter galleries and no figurehead. Hands 
and Seals, May 14, 1808. 

* Filed in the New York Custom House after her enlargement, 
1808. 



128 Old Steamboat Days 

II 

EARLY STEAMBOAT ADVERTISEMENTS 

The first newspaper advertisement of passenger service by 
steamboat is the following announcement of the times of de- 
parture and the rates of fare on the Clermont : 

The Public is Informed How to Take Passage on the 
Clermont 

''Sept. 2nd, 1807. 
**The North River Steamboat will leave Paulus Hook 
ferry on Friday, 4th of September, at 6 in the morning, and 
arrive at Albany on Saturday in the afternoon. Provisions, 
good berths, and accommodations are provided. 
**The charge to each passenger as follows: 

**To Newburg 3 Dolls— Time, 14 hours. 

" Poughkeepsie 4 "— ** 17 " 

" Esopus 4i '• — " 20 " 

"Hudson 5 "— " 30 " 

" Albany 7 " — - 36 " 

"For places apply to Wm. Vandervoort, No 48 Courtland 
Street, on the corner of Greenwich Street." 

The following is believed to be the second steamboat 
advertisement to appear. It furnished much more informa- 
tion to the public as to the accommodations provided for 
passengers by this new mode of transportation: 



11 




(< <( 


2 




in the afternoon. 


4 




«< << 


7 




" evening. 


9 




(< << 



Appendix 129 

Steamboat 

"For the Information of the Public. 

" The Steamboat will leave New York for Albany every 
Saturday afternoon exactly at 6 o'clock, and will pass 
West Point about 4 o'clock Sunday morning. 

Newburg * 

Poughkeepsie * 

Esopus * 

Red Hook 
CatskiU 
Hudson ' 

" She will leave Albany for New York every Wednesday 
morning exactly 8 o'clock, and pass — 

Hudson about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. 

Esopus " 8 " " evening. 

Poughkeepsie " 12 " at night. 

Newburg " 4 " Thursday morning. 

West Point " 7 

" As the time at which the boat may arrive at the different 
places above mentioned may vary an hour more or less, ac- 
cording to the advantage or disadvantage of wind and tide, 
those who wish to come on board will see the necessity of 
being on the spot an hour before the time. Persons wishing 
to come on board from any other landing than those here 
specified, can calculate the time the boat will pass, and be 
ready on her arrival. 

" Innkeepers or boatmen, who bring passengers on board or 
take them ashore from any part of the river, will be allowed 
one shilling for each person. 



130 Old Steamboat Days 

Price of the passage — from New York. 

To West Point $2.50 

" Newburg. 3.00 

" Poughkeepsie 3.50 

" Esopus 4.00 

" Red Hook 4.50 

" Hudson 5.00 

" Albany 7.00 

From Albany. 

To Hudson $2.00 

" Red Hook 3.00 

" Esopus 3.50 

" Poughkeepsie 4 . 00 

" Newburg and West Point 4 . 50 

" New York 7.00 

" All the passengers are to pay at the rate of $1.00 for every 
twenty miles, and half a dollar for every meal they may take. 

" Children from 1 to 5 years of age to pay half price, pro- 
vided they sleep two in a berth, and whole price for each 
one who requests to occupy a whole berth. 

" Servants, who pay two-thirds price, are entitled to a berth; 
they pay half price if they do not have a berth. 

" Every passenger paying full price is allowed 60 pounds of 
baggage; if less than whole price, 40 pounds. They are to 
pay at the rate of 3 cents per pound for surplus baggage. 
Storekeepers, who wish to carry light and valuable mer- 
chandise, can be accommodated on paying 3 cents a pound. 

** Passengers will breakfast before they come aboard. Din- 



Appendix 131 

ner will be served up exactly at 1 o'clock; tea, with meats, 
which is also supper, at 8 o'clock in the evening; and break- 
fast at 9 o'clock in the morning. No one has a claim on the 
steward for victuals at any other time." 

m 

THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL TORPEDO 

Robert Fulton's Description of how he Destroyed 
THE Brig Dorothea in Walmer Roads, Engiand 

"To convince Mr. Pitt that a vessel could be destroyed 
by the explosion of a torpedo under her bottom," writes 
Mr. Fulton, '*a strong-built Danish brig, the Dorothea, 
burthen two hundred tons, was anchored in Walmer Roads, 
near Deal, and within a mile of Walmer Castle, the then 
residence of Mr. Pitt. Two boats, each with eight men, 
commanded by Lieutenant Robinson, were put under my 
direction. I prepared two empty torpedoes in such a manner 
that each was only from two to three pounds specifically 
heavier than salt water and so suspended them that they 
hung fifteen feet under water. 

*'They were then tied one to each end of a small rope 
eighty feet long. Thus arranged, and the brig drawing 
twelve feet of water, the fourteenth day of October was spent 
in practice. Each boat having a torpedo in the stern, they 
started from the shore about a mile above the brig and rowed 
down toward her; the uniting line of the torpedoes being 
stretched to its full extent, the two boats were distant from 
each other about seventy feet; thus they approached in such 



132 Old Steamboat Days 

a manner that one boat kept the larboard, the other the star- 
board side of the brig in view. 

**So long as the connecting line of the torpedo passed the 
buoy of the brig they were thrown into the water and carried 
on by the tide until the connecting line showed the brig's 
cable; the tide then drove them under her body. The ex- 
periment being repeated several times taught the men how 
to act, and proved to my satisfaction that when properly 
placed on the tide the torpedoes would invariably go under 
the bottom of the vessel." 

Fulton continued to the final stage of his experiment and 
filled one of the torpedoes with 180 pounds of powder and 
set its clockwork to eighteen minutes. The experiment began 
on October 15, 1805, at five o'clock in the afternoon. 

** At forty minutes past four," says Fulton, " the boats rode 
toward the brig and the torpedoes were thrown into the 
water, the tide carried them, as before described, under the 
bottom of the brig, where, at the expiration of eighteen min- 
utes, the explosion appeared to raise her bodily about six 
feet. She separated in the middle, and the two ends went 
down. 

**In twenty seconds nothing was to be seen of her, except 
floating fragments; the pumps and foremast were blown out 
of her, the fore-topsail yard was thrown up to the cross trees, 
the four chain plates with their boats were torn from her sides, 
the mizzen chain plates and shrouds, being stronger than 
those of the foremast, or the shelf being more forward than 
aft, the mizzen mast was broken off in two places; these dis- 
coveries were made by means of the pieces which were found 
afloat." 



Appendix 133 

IV 

THE FIRST ENGINEER OF THE CLERMONT 

"Robert Fulton's chief engineer was Paul A. Sabbaton, 
who supervised the building of all of the Fulton engines 
built in this country up to the time of Fulton's death. Who 
the first engineer of the Clermont on her maiden voyage was 
we do not know, and can only quote an interesting item in 
connection therewith which appeared in the columns of The 
Naviical Gazette under date of Saturday, July 29, 1871, 
as follows: 'On Monday morning, Charles Dyke, 85 years 
of age, died in East New York, at the residence of his son-in- 
law, William E. Smith. Mr. Dyke was born on the 13th day 
of June, 1786, and in his earlier years followed the trade of a 
carpenter. He was at one time carpenter on the stage of the 
old Park Theatre. Having a natural talent for engineering, 
however, he turned his attention to that business, and soon 
became an expert. In 1807 Mr. Dyke was engaged as assist- 
ant engineer on Robert Fulton's steamer Clermortt, on her 
first trip to Albany. The chief engineer was a Scotchman, 
and on the arrival of the boat at the point of destination, he 
celebrated the event by a rousing spree, the result of which 
was that Fulton discharged him, and he promoted Mr. Dyke 
to his position. When the Fulton Ferry Line was first estab- 
lished, Mr. Dyke was engineer of the first boat. He also 
engineered the first steamer down the Ohio and Mississippi 
rivers to New Orleans, and ran Vanderbilt's boats to Perth 
Amboy, when the present Commodore was a captain on his 
own craft. On one of his trips to New Orleans, with ord- 



134 Old Steamboat Days 

nance and ammunition for Gen. Jackson, in 1814, Mr. Dyke 
and the crew were pressed into service. They fought gallantly 
in the defense of that city. Mr. Dyke received a wound in the 
leg, and he bore the scar to the day of his death.' " 

Nautical Gazette. 



THE ONLY KNOWN STATUE OF FULTON 

"The statue of Fulton, which was ordered about a year 
ago by the Union Ferry Company, was this morning conveyed 
from the atelier of Messrs. M. J. Seelig & Co., sculptors and 
founders, Maujer street, Williamsburgh, and placed in the 
niche designated for it in front of the new ferryhouse. 

''The statue is ten feet six inches high, modeled by Buberl, 
from a picture of Fulton, by Jarvis, which formerly belonged 
to Cadwallader C. Colden, his biographer, and which was 
subsequently given by Mrs. Colden to the late Dr. Vinton, 
in the possession of whose family it now remains. This 
appears to be the only portrait of Fulton in existence. And 
Mr. Pierrepont, the Chairman of the Committee to whom 
the Ferry Company intrusted the duty of obtaining the 
statue, had great difficulty in tracing this one. Fulton is 
represented leaning on the model of the Nassau, the first 
steam ferryboat placed upon the Fulton Ferry. He is 
dressed in the ordinary dress of the period, say 1815, high- 
collared coat, tights, and Hessian boot with tassels. A 
cloak is thrown over his shoulders. The face wears a look 
of intense thought, but there is something of the artistic 
dream in the expression; for it is remarkable that Fulton, 



Appendix 135 

like Morse, was originally an artist, and America owes to 
two brethren of the brush the two applications of steam 
and electricity which have revolutionized all our ideas of 
travel, of space, of mechanical possibility. There is grace 
in the lines of the statue and in the disposition of the few 
shadows, which implies considerable original talent, and a 
great deal of conscientious study on the part of the artist. 
The material of which it is cast is zinc, and this has been 
painted a light stone color. It weighs about 2,300 pounds. 
It is a fine work of art. 

"Great credit is due to Mr. Pierrepont, who first sug- 
gested the work, and has seen it successfully executed." 

Brooklyn Eagle, 1873. 



VI 
JOHN FITCH'S EXPERIMENT 

He Tells How he Hoped to Make Steam Navigation 
Possible With Huge Oars Moved by Machinery 

" To the Editor of the Columbian Magazine: 

" Sir, Philad., Dec. 8, 1786. 

" The reason of my so long deferring to give you a descrip- 
tion of the Steam-boat, has been in some measure owing to 
the complication of the works, and an apprehension that a 
number of drafts would be necessary, in order to shew the 
powers of the machine as clearly as you would wish. But as 
I have not been able to hand you herewith such drafts, I can 



136 Old Steamboat Days 

only give you the general principles. — It is, in several parts, 
similar to the late improved steam-engines in Europe, though 
there are some alterations — our cylinder is to be horizontal, 
and the steam to work with equal force at each end. The 
mode by which we obtain (what I take the liberty of terming) 
a vacuum, is, we believe, entirely new; as is also the method 
of letting the water into it, and throwing it off against the 
atmosphere without any friction. It is expected, that the 
engine, which is a 12 inch cylinder, will move with a clear 
force of 11 or 12 cwt. after the frictions are deducted; this 
force is to act against a wheel of 18 inches diameter. The 
piston is to move about three feet, and each vibration of the 
piston gives the axis about 40 evolutions. Each evolution of 
the axis moves 12 oars or paddles 5 J feet (which work per- 
pendicularly, and are represented by the stroke of the paddle 
of a canoe). As 6 of the paddles are raised from the water, 
6 more are entered, and the two sets of paddles make their 
strokes of about 11 feet in each evolution. The cranks of the 
axis act upon the paddles about J of their length from the 
lower end, on which part of the oar the whole force of the 
axis is applied. Our engine is placed in the boat about J 
from the stem, and both the action and re-action turn the 
wheel the same way. 

*' With the most perfect respect, sir, I beg leave to subscribe 
myself 

'!Your very humble servant, 

"JOHN FITCH." 



PROMINENT HUDSON RIVER STEAMBOATS, 



BUILT 



CLERMONT 


1807 


CAR OP NEPTUNE 

PARAGON 


1808 
1811 


HOPE 


1811 


FIRE FLY .... 


1812 


LADY RICHMOND 


1813 


OLIVE BRANCH 

CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON. 
UNITED STATES 


1815 
1816 
1821 


JAMES KENT 

CONSTITUTION 


1823 
1825 


CONSTELLATION 


1825 


COMMERCE 


1825 


SWIFT SURE 


1825 


NEW PHILADELPHIA 

INDEPENDENCE 


1826 

1827 


ALBANY 


1827 


NORTH AMERICA 


1827 


VICTORY 


1827 


DE WITT CLINTON 

OHIO 


1828 
1829 


NOVELTY 


1830 


ERIE. 


1832 


CHAMPLAIN 


1832 


WESTCHESTER 


1832 


ROBERT L. STEVENS 

HIGHLANDER 


1835 
1835 


SWALLOW 


1836 


ROCHESTER 


1836 


UTICA 


1837 


BALLOON 

NORTH AMERICA 


1839 
1839 


SOUTH AMERICA 


1840 


TROY 


1841 


EMPIRE 

NIAGARA 


1843 
1844 


IRON WITCH 


1844 


RIP VAN WINKLE 

HENDRIK HUDSON 

OREGON 


1845 
1845 
1845 


THOMAS POWELL . 


1846 


ISAAC NEWTON 


1846 


ALIDA 


1847 


ARMENIA 


1847 


NEW WORLD 


1847 


FRANCIS SKIDDY 


1852 


DANIEL DREW 


1860 


JAMES W. BALDWIN 

MARY POWELL 


1861 
1861 


THOMAS CORNELL 

BERKSHIRE 


1863 
1863 


ST. JOHN 


1863 


CHAUNCEY VIBB.VUD 

DEAN RICHMOND 


1864 
1864 


NUHPA 

DREW 


1865 
1866 


CITY OP TROY 


1876 


SARATOGA 


1877 


CITY OP CATSKILL 

ALBANY 


1880 
1880 


KAATERSKILL 

CITY OF KINGSTON 

NKWHURGH ! 


1882 
1884 
1886 


HOMKR RAMSDELL 

NEW YORK 

ADHtONDACK 


1887 
18S7 
1896 


ONTKORA 

C W MOUSE 1 


1898 
1904 


HENDRICK HUD.SON 1 

PRINCETON ! 


1906 
1907 


KNICKERBOCKER 1 

ROBERT FULTON i 


1907 
1909 



CONSTRUCTED BY 



Charles Brown, 
do 
do 



Charles Brown 

do 

do 

Henry Eckford 

J. Williams 

Blossom, Smith k Dimon . . 
Brown k Bell 

do 

C. Bergh 

do 



Brown k Bell . . 

J. Vauj^hn 

William Capes . 

M. Ken yon. . . . 

do 



Channcey Goodrich. 

Brown k Bell 

do 

Smith k Dimon .... 



Lawrence k Sneden. 

William Capes 

Smith & Dimon 

William Capes 

Devine Burtis 

do 

do 

Wm, Capes 

Wm. H. Brown 

George Collyer 

Hogg k Delamater,. 
George Collyer 



Smith k Dimon 

Lawrence k Sneden 

William Brown 

do 

Thomas Collyer 

William H. Brown , 

George Collyer 

Thomas Collyer 

M. S. Allison 

do 

E. S. Whitlock 

Morton k Ednionds , 

John Englis 

Lawrence k Sneden 

John Englis 

J. S. Baldwin 

John Englis 

do 

do 

Van I.,oan k Magee 

Harlan k Hollingsworth Co. 

Van Loan k Magee 

Harlan & Hollingsworth Co. 

Neafie k Levy 

T. S. Marvel A Co 

Harlan k Holllngswortli Co. 

John Englis 

Marvel k Co 

Harlan k Hollingsworth Co. 

Marvel & Co 

N. Y. Shi|)l>nihllng Co 

Marvel k Co 

Maiv.'l k Co 



AT 

New York . . 

do 

do 

do 
New York . . 

do 

do 
New York . . . 

do 

do 

do 

do 
Brooklyn . . . . 

do 

Philadelphia. . 
New York . . . 
Philadelphia. . 
New York . , . 

Albany 

do ...... 

do 

Hyde Park . . . 
New York . . . 

do 
New York . . . 
Kingston . . . . 
New York . . . 
Brooklyn . . . . 
New York . . , 
Brooklyn 

do 

do 

do 

Brooklyn 

New York . . . 

do 

do 

do 

do 



do 
do 
do 
do 



do 

do 

do 

do 

Jersey City 

do 

Brooklyn 

Alliens 

Brooklyn 

do 

Greenpolnt 

New Baltimore. 
Greenpoint 

do 

do .... 

Athens 

Wilmington, Del 

Athens , 

Wilmington, Del 
Philadelphia..,., 

Newburgh , 

WllmingtoT) . . . . , 

Greenpoint 

Newburgh 

Wilmington, Del, 

Newburgh 

Camden, N. J. , 

Newburgh 

Newburgh , 



GROSS 
TONS 



295 
331 
280 
118 
370 
295 
495 
180 
364 
275 
275 

265 
300 
368 
298 
497 
290 
571 
412 
450 
471 
471 
230 
298 
313 
426 
491 
340 
204 
494 
638 



534 

1,170 

1,050 

585 

1,332 

640 

398 

1,418 

1,235 

880 

710 

983 

1,256 



2,645 
1,158 
2,525 
1,232 
2,902 
1,527 
1,438 

1,415 
1,361 
1,117 
1,033 
1,181 
1,552 
3,644 
1,213 
4,307 
2,847 
4,500 
2,000 
3,000 



lAMBOA 


TS, 


? DIMENSIONS 
L. B. D. 


EN 


133' X 18' X 7' 


BoultoT 


175' X 24' X 8' 


Robert 


173' X 27' X 9' 






Robert 
Robert 


100' X 19' X 7' 


112' 




122' X 30' 




157' X 33^' X 10' 


James 


140' 




140' X 48' 




145' X 27' 


J. Birk 


149' X 27' 


do 


130' X 24' X 8^' 


James 


130' X 24' X 8i' 




170' X 24' 


John St 


148' X 26' 


d( 


212' X 26' X 9' 


d( 


218' X 30' X 8' 


dc 




West P( 


233' X 28' X 10' 


192' X 30' 




165' X 24' X 9' 


Novelty 


180' X 28' X 9' 


West P* 


180' X 28' X 9' 




134' X 23' X 8' 




175' X 24' 




175' X 24' X 8' 


West V( 


224' X 22' X 8^' 




209' X 24' X 8|' 




180' X 21^' X 8j' 




160' X 18' X 7^' 


James C 


230' X 26' X 9' 




260' X 26' X 9i' 




294' X 61' 


West Pc 


307' X 30' X 9' 


W. A. L 


265' X 28^' X 9I-' 


HoggA 


225' X 27' X 13' 




242' X 25' X 8' 


W. A. L 


320' X 35' X 9^' 


Allaire 


330' X 35' X 10' 


Stillmau 


231' X 28' X 9* 


T. P. Se. 


338' X 40' X 10§' 


Allaire > 


265' X 30' X 10' 


Henry R 


185' X 28' X 8' 




385' X 35' X 11' 


T. F. Se< 


322' X 38' X \\\' 


Jas. Cuii 


251' X 30' X 9^' 


Neptnne 


242' X 34' X 9' 


Fletcher 


260' X 34^' X 10^' 




310' X 34' 




253' X 37' X 10' 


James V. 


420' X 51' X 10' 


T. F. Sec 


281' X 35' X 9' 


Fletcher 


348' X 46' X 10' 


James C 


253' X 37' X 10' 


Fletcher. 


366' X 47' X 10' 


Allaire V 


300' X 36' X 10' 


Quintard 


300' X 35' X 10' 


T. P. Sec 


250' X 35' X 10' 


W &A. 


295' X 40' X llf 


dc 


281' X 38' X 10' 


do 


2.-.0' X 33^' X 12^' 


Harlan .% 


210' X 32' X 12 -' 


Neafie k 


212' X 32i' X 11' 


William 


311' X 40' X 12|^' 


W. & A. 


410' X 50' X 12' 


« 


250' X 35' X 10' 




427' X 50 J' X 14' 




390' X 45' X 13f 




440' X 50.6' X 14.6' 


1 


330' X 42' X 13.7' 




415' X 50^' X 14' 


i 



=1907. 



Compiled and Arranged by S. W. Stanton. 



.^ BUILT BY 
Vatt 


SIZE 

DIAM. 

INCHEt 

24 
33 
32 


ENGINE 

8TR0K1 
? FEET 

4 

H 

4 


P ROUTE 
N. Y. and Albany 


■en's Works . . , 


do 


3 


do 


ueen 


do 


ou's Works . . . . 
J . . . . 


20 


3f 


N. Y. and Newburgh 

N. Y. and Albany 


) 


40 
44 


5 
5 


do 


Uaire 


do 

do 










do ... 


/ 


42 

44 
16 &30 
16 & 30 

55 

44 

65 

44 


9 
10 
4 
4 

10 
10 
9 

8 


do 




do 


.llaire 


do 




do 


Is 


do 




^ do .... 




do 




do .... 


Foundry 


do 




66 
60 
30 
44 
42 


10 
9 
6 
10 
10 


do 

do 


n Works 


do 


fPoundry 


N. Y. and Troy 




do 




N. Y. and Albany 




36 
41 
46 
43 
43 
28 
48 
54 
44 
(2)48 
60 


10 
10 
10 
10 
10 

11 
11 
11 

10 
12 
11 


do 


<?oundry 

( 


N. Y. and Newburgh 

N. Y. and Troy 

N. Y. and Albany 




do 


lingham 


Poughkeepsie and Albany . . . 
N. Y. and Albany 


i 


do 


.foundry 


N. Y. and Troy 


lall 


do ... 


jmater 


do 


1 


N. Y. and Albany . . . 


.all 


50 

72 

72 

48 

8li 

56 

40 

76 

71 

60 

60 

72 

72 

54 

76 

62 

37 

80 

60 

60 

56 

73 

63 
30 &56 
26 &45 
28&52 

75 

81 

55 

81 
45 & 70 

85 

70 
45 & 70 


10 
11 
11 
11 
12 
12 
14 
15 
14 
10 
11 
12 
12 
11 
15 
12 
14 
5 
14 
12 
12 
12 
12 
12 
3 
3 
3 
12 
12 
10 
12 

12 
12 

7 


do 


U :; 


do 


*en & Co 


do 


':Co 


N. Y. and Newburgh 

N. Y. and Albany 


s 


iiham & Co ... . 


do 


.... 


do 


Co 


do 

do 


ham & Co 


I Works 

prison & Co 


do 

N. Y. and Kondout. . 





do 




do 

N. Y. and Hudson 


ngham 


i Co 


N. Y. and Albany 


' rison & Co ... . 
f ngham & Co. . , 


do 

do 


rison & Co 

» 


N. Y. and Hudson 


N. Y, and Albany 


i Works 

Co 


N. Y. and Troy 


do 


!her 


N. Y. and Catskill 




N, Y. and Albany 




N. Y. and Catskill 


lings worth Co. 


N. Y. and Rondout 




N. Y. and Newburgh 

do 

N. Y. and Albany 


rht::;::::::: 


jher Co 





People's Line, N.Y. k Albany. 

N. Y. and Catskill Line 

People's Line, N.Y. & Albany. 

Hudson River Day Line 

People's Line, N.Y. & Albany. 
Citizens' Line, N. Y. & Troy. . 
Hudson River Day Line 



REMARKS 

Lengthened 1808 and name changed to NORTH RIVER. 

Broken up. 

Struck a rock and sunk near Albany. 

Had mate in PERSEVERANCE, both broken up. 

Broken up. 

Broken up about 1830. 

Built for N. Y. and New Brunswick route. Broken up. 

Placed on L. L Sound 1828; Boston & Portland route 1832. 

N.Y. & New Haven route; afterwards towboat on Hudson. 

Stake boat on North River until 1895 ; broken up. 

Altered into towboat named INDIANA ; broken up. 

Dismantled and engine taken to Lake Erie. 

Altered 1852 and named ONTARIO ; broken up 1894. 

Altered into towboat ; broken up. 

Altered into towboat ; broken up. 

Altered into towboat ; broken up. 

Lenghtened 1839 to 289 feet ; broken up. 

Two beam engines ; sunk by ice 1839. 

Altered into towboat ; sunk 1845. 

Twice enlarged ; broken up. 

Broken up. 

Lengthened to 220 feet ; 2 engines ; 12 boilers ; 4 stacks. 

Two engines ; 4 smokestacks j engines placed in TROY, 
Mate to ERIE ; broken up. 

Altered into towboat named HUDSON ; broken up. 
Broken up; engine placed in CHARLOTTE VANDERBILT. 
Went to Delaware River ; broken up. 
Lost, April 7, 1845 ; over 100 persons perished. 
Broken up. 

Altered into towboat ; condemned 1875. 
Broken up on Delaware River. 
Broken up at New Orleans. 
Broken up ; engine placed in BERKSHIRE. 
Engines from ERIE ; placed horizontally ; broken up. 
In collisiou, July 16, 1853 ; broken up. 
Altered into towboat ; broken up 1898. 
Name changed to ERIE ; made barge ; broken up. 
Wrecked at Albany, April 16, 1872. 
Broken up. 

Lost by collision with steamer City of Boston, 1864. 
Broken up. 

Lengthened, 1854, to 405 feet ; burned Dec. 5, 1863. 
Altered into towboat ; broken up. 
Went to Potomac River, 1883 ; burned Jan. 5, 1886. 
Engine put in ST. JOHN ; broken up. 
Wrecked, Nov. 5, 1864 ; engine in DEAN RICHMOND. 
Burned August 29, 1885. 

Lengthened to 273 feet ; now named CENTRAL-HUDSON. 
Lengthened to 300 feet ; running 1907. 
Wrecked March 27, 1882. 
Burned June 5, 1864 ; 40 persona lost. 
Burned Jan. 24, 1885. 
Broken up, 1902. 
Running to Troy, 1907. 

Propeller; name changed to METROPOLITAN; broken up. 
Broken up, 1904. 
Burned, April 5, 1907. 

Sunk by collision, Oct. 13, 1906; raised and rebuilt, 1907. 
Burned Feb., 1883. 

Lengthened, 1893, to 325 feet ; running 1907. 
Running 1907. 

Propeller ; sold, 1889, for service on Pacific; sunk 1899. 
Propeller ; running 1907. 

Propeller ; lengthened 1885 to 237 feet ; running 1907. 
Lengthened to 350 feet; running 1907. 
Running 1907. 
do 
do 
do 
Ready for service 1908. 

do. 
Ready for service 1909. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Page 

Albany 35,72 

Amsterdam. 89 

Baker's Falls 122 

Barlow, Joel 4, 12 

Browmie, Charles 10 

Buckman, Ira 79 

Buffalo 90 

Builders of steamboats ... 53, 54 

Calliope 27 

Canal packet boats 86 

Captains of Steamboats 
Anderson, Capt. A. L. . . 63 
Anderson, Capt. A. E. . . 63 

Bartholomew, Capt 60 

Benton, Capt. C 60 

Bruder, Capt 82 

Bunker, Capt. EHhu F. 31, 60 

Burnett, Capt. J. M 28 

Cochran, Capt 60 

Cruttenden, Capt. R. G. 60, 61 

DeGroot, Capt. A 61 

Drake, Capt 60 

Fitch, Capt 60 

Fountain, Capt 60 

Furey, Capt. R. G 61 

Gorham, Capt. A 61 

Halstead, Capt. Chas. ... 61 
Hitchcock, Capt. Dave. . 64 



Captains — Cont^d, Page 

Houghton, Capt. "Pug" . 61 
Hulse, Capt. Thos. N. . . 61 
Jenkins, Capt. Samuel 14, 59 
Johnson, Capt. Samuel . . 61 

Kellogg, Capt. H. J 61 

Macy, Capt. R. B 61 

Moore, Capt. H 60 

Odell, Capt. J. S 61 

Peck, Capt. D 60 

Peck, Capt. W. H 61 

Post, Capt 64 

Roe, Capt. J. S 63 

Roorback, Capt 59 

Samuels, Capt. John .... 61 

Sherman, Capt 60 

Squires, Capt. A. H 77 

Temple, Capt. Harvey. . 88 

Tupper, Capt. G. 61 

Tupper, Capt. W. W.... 61 
WiswaU, Capt. Saml...59, 61 

Wiswall, Capt. T 60 

Clay, Henry 23 

Clinton's big ditch 90 

Clinton, Gov. DeWitt. . . .90, 91 

Coal-burning boilers 54 

Collect Pond, N. Y 2, 38 

Copper boilers 54, 72 

Corning, Erastus 24 



140 



Old Steamboat Days 



Page 

Cornwallis, Genl 73 

Dam at Troy 122 

Disasters on the river 75 

Discoverie 117 

Dolphin 91 

Dorothea 5 

Drew, Daniel 24, 63 

Emmett, Mr 42, 46 

Engineers 64 

Erie Canal 84, 90, 91, 92 

Erie Railway 73 

Fitch, John 2,38 

Fowler, Reginald 25 

Franklin, Benjamin 3 

Fulton, Robert, 1, 17, 19, 20, 108 

Fulton Ferry 16 

Fulton Water Gate 112 

Gibbons, Thos 41 

Glens Falls 122 

Grant, Genl. Fred D 109 

Half Moon 113, 114, 

115, 116, 117 

Henry Knowlton 75 

Hoboken, N. J 2 

Hog frames 57 

Horse ferryboats 16 

Hudson 69 

Hudson's Bay 117 

Hudson, Henry.. 108, 114, 

115, 116, 117 
Hudson Memorial Bridge. . 110 

Hudson River lines 35, 102 

Hudson River R. R 25, 33 

Iron boilers 72 

Iron hulls 5Q 



Page 
Kirkpatriek, Chief Justice, 41 

Kosciusko, Genl 23 

Little Falls 89 

Livingston, Chancellor Robt. 

R 7,8,14,39,90 

Livingston, Harriet, Ful- 
ton's wife 13 

Marshall, John, Chief Jus- 
tice 51 

Memorial park 112 

Mitchell, Dr. Samuel L. . . 91 

McKenny, Thos. L 94 

Monopoly broken 37 

Newton, Isaac 24, 55 

New Amsterdam. 117 

Newburgh Bay 79 

Noah Brown 79 

Noah's Brig 78 

Oakley, Mr 42, 45 

Ogden, Ex-Gov 41 

Old Hickory — Genl. Jack- 
son 23 

Ormsbee, Elijah 2 

Ossining 70 

Passenger barges 97, 98, 99 

Piermont 73 

Pitt, William 5 

Powell, T. &J 98 

Propellers 57, 98 

Rates of fare 14, 20 

Richmond, Dean 24 

Rival Lines 30 

Rochester 89 

Rome 89 

Rondout 28 



Index 



141 



Page 

Roosevelt, Nicholas J 29 

Roosevelt, Robert 109 

Rumsey, James 1 

Runners for steamboats .... 32 

Safety barges 71, 93, 

94, 95, 96, 97 

Saugerties 28 

Schenectady 89 

Seine River 7 

Sloops 13, 36 

Steamboat inspection law, 71, 80 

Steamboat profits 35 

Steamboat racing 68, 71 

Steamboats 

Adirondack 82 

Advocate 21 

Air Line, ferryboat 28 

Albany 21 

Albany II 67, 101 

Alida 21, 66, 70 

Andrew Harder 22 

Armenia 25, 27, 66 

Asbury Park 105 

Atlas - 21 

Baloon 24, 55 

Bellana 41 

Berkshire 21, 81 

Bolivar 21 

Buffalo 21, 34 

Catskill — City of Hudson 22 

Car of Neptune 18, 20 

Cataline 21 

Cayuga 21 

Champion 21 

Champlain 21, 67, 68 



Steamboats — Confd. Page 
Chancellor Livingston 19, 

20, 54, 66 
Chauncey Vibbard 

22, 65, 66, 67 
Chief Justice John Mar- 
shall 60 

Chrystenah 22 

City of Boston 81 

City of Hudson 21 

City of Troy 83 

Clermont, renamed North 
River, 1, 10, 13, 14, 18, 
19, 20, 39, 54, 58, 66, 76 

Columbia 22, 68 

Confidence 22 

Connecticut 21 

Cmstellation 20, 65, 66 

Constitution 20, 65 

Cornelius Vanderbilt ... 69, 71 

Coxsackie 22 

C.W.Morse 21,101, 

103, 104, 105 

Curtis Peck 22 

Daniel Drew 22, 66 

Dean Richmond 22, 63, 81 

DeWiU Clinton 21, 79 

Diamond 21 

Drew 22, 63 

D. S, Miller— Pough- 

keepsie 22 

Eagle 21 

Emerald 21 

Empire 21, 79 

Empire State 21 

Erastus Corning 21 



142 



Old Steamboat Days 



Steamboats — Confd. Page 

Erie 21, 67 

Eureka 22 

Express 21 

Fairfield, 21 

Fanny 21 

Francis SJciddy 66, 81 

Fidtm 31 

Fidton, ferryboat 16 

General Jackson 22, 76 

General Sedgwick 28 

General Slocum 75 

Glen Cove 22, 28 

Helen 21, 67 

Hendrik Hudson 7, 21, 34, 70 
Hendrick Hudson II 

65, 101, 102 

Henry Clay 21,70,79 

Henry Eckford 21 

Hero 21 

Homer Ramsdell 101 

Hope 21 

Illinois 22 

Independence 21 

Iran Witch 22, 56 

Isaac Newton 21, 55, 81 

James Kent 21, 54 

James Madison 21 

Jas. W. Baldwin — Central 

Hudson 22 

Jenny Lind 21 

Jersey, ferryboat 16 

J. L. Hasbrook — Marl- 
boro 22 

Joseph Belknap 25 

Kaaterskill 22 



Steamboats — Cont'd. Page 

Knickerbocker 1 21 

Knickerbocker II 107 

Kosduszko 21, 34, 69 

Larchmont 75 

Legislator 21 

Long Branch — Sleepy Hol- 
low 25 

Manhattan 21, 34 

Mary Powell 22, 5Q, 63, 66 

Metamora 22 

M. Martin 22 

McManus 22 

Mouse in the Mountain . . 41 

Newburgh 101 

New Orleans 29 

New Jersey 22 

New London 71 

New Philadelphia 21, 56 

New World.... n, 35, 55, 

66, 70, 81 

New York 67, 101 

Niagara 21 

Nimrod 21 

North America. . . .21, 54, 

65, 66, 68, 69, 76 

Norwich 26 

Novelty 54 

Nuhpa 22 

Ohio 21 

Olive Branch 60 

Oliver Elsworth 21 

Onteora 82, 101 

Oreg(m 21, 69, 81 

Paragon 18 

Portsmouth 22 



Index 



143 



Steamboats — Confd. Page 

Princeton 21, 107 

P. G, Coffin 21 

Reindeer 70, 80 

Rhode Island 21 

Richmond 21 

Rip Van Winkle 21, 63 

Riverside, ferryboat 29 

RobeH Ftdton 103 

Robt. L. Stevens 21 

Rochester 68 

Rockland 21 

Roger Williams. 22 

Sandusky 21 

Santa Claus 22 

Saratoga 82 

Savannah 29 

Shephard Knapp 21 

South America 21, 54 

StilleUo , ... 66 

St. John 22,71,82 

St Nicholas 21 

Stoudinger 41 

Sun 22 

Swallow 21, 68, 77 

Swift Sure 60 

Syracuse 22 

Telegraph 69 

Thomas Cornell 22 

Thomas Powell 22 

Tolchester—S. M. Felton 25 

Troy 21 

Ulster 22 

Union 21 

United States 21 

Utica 20 

Vamoose 67 



Steamboats — ConVd, Page 

Vanderbilt 34 

Vesuvius 9 

Victory 79 

Walk-in-the-Water 29 

Washington 22 

Wave 22 

Westchester 21 

Wm. F. Romer 22 

W.C.Redfield 22 

York, ferryboat 16 

Steam ferryboats 16 

Stevens, Col. John 2, 18 

St. John, Capt. A. P 24 

Stony Point 113, 121 

Syracuse 89 

Tappan Zee 121 

Tarrytown 115 

Tivoli 28 

Torpedoes, submarine .... 5, 6, 7 

Towing on the river 87 

Trinity Church 16, 108 

Utica 89 

Vanderbilt, * ' Commodore ' ' 

C 20,32, 33,34,37,40 

Vanderbilt, Cornelius 109 

Verplanck's Point 113 

Vibbard, Chauncey 24 

Walmer Roads and Castle 5 
Washington, Genl. George 

2, 113 

Webster, Daniel 37, 42 

West, Benjamin 3, 4 

West Point 120 

Wirt, Wm., Atty. Genl 50 

Wood-biu*ning boilers 55 

Woodford, Gen'l Stewart L. 110 



Colonial Families 

OF THE 

United States of America 

In which is given the History^ Genealogy and Armorial 

Bearings of Colonial Families who settled in the 

American Colonies between the Periods 

from the Time of the Settlement of 

Jamestown, ISth May, 1607 

to the Battle of Lexington, 19th April, 1775 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE NORBURY MACKENZIE, LL.B. 

Member of the American Historical Association, National Genealogical 

Society, Old North-West Genealogical and Historical Society, 

Member of the Committee on Heraldry and Genealogy 

of Maryland Historical Society 



THE plan of the work is to give a sketch of the life of the 
immigrant ancestor, the family from which he sprung, and 
the direct line of descent of the present Hving representative 
of the family, together with armorial bearings, and such other 
matters as may be of interest not only to the present but 
future generations. There will be about one hundred and 
fifty pedigrees in each volume and over 20,000 names in the 
index. 

Large octavo, 750 pages, gilt top, printed on all rag paper. 
Edition Limited, $15.00 net (carriage extra) 

The Grafton Press 
70 Fifth Avenue, New York 



The Building of a Book 

With an introduction by 
THEODORE L. DeVINNE 

Edited hy FREDERICK H. HITCHCOCK 



A BOOK EVERY WRITER SHOULD READ 



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Library 
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